


The Monster

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Everyone Is Gay, Except They Aren't In Space, F/F, Femslash, Gay Club, Lesbians in Space, Love, Mutual Pining, New York City, Pining, Slow Burn, actual history and places, eventual great sex, many forms of love, one graphic reminisce of non-sexual child abuse due to homophobia, references to Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, romantic happy ending, the rest of the tags are trigger warnings, time (in)appropriate attitudes toward sexual orientation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24307522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: “My life for the past fourteen years has been one long slide into humiliation and rage.” — Raffi Musiker, Star Trek: Picard,The End is the Beginning“Nope, not this time.” — Curator, AO3, this storyIt’s July 1994 and, because of Jean-Luc Picard, Raffi Musiker lost her job at the United Nations. Kathryn Janeway doesn’t want Raffi to suffer for Jean-Luc’s mistakes … but that’s only the beginning of Raffi and Kathryn getting to know each other.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/Raffi Musiker
Comments: 171
Kudos: 45
Collections: Cave Diving on Mars - Kathryn Janeway and Mark Johnson, Kathryn Janeway Needs A Hug





	1. Let Me Take You Out to Dinner

The knock is hard, insistent. 

Her sister and Gabe both have a key, not that Gabe is likely to use his.

Cris knows to knock softly, that she sleeps at odd hours.

And JL doesn’t knock, he taps, playing a door like his beloved flute.

This knock has no music. It’s determined and decisive and demanding. 

So, although Raffi has never heard this knock before, she knows exactly who’s on the other side of her apartment door. The heels of Raffi’s hands press to her pounding forehead. She’s sprawled on the sofa, newspaper pages all around, that morning’s toast on a plate in the middle of the coffee table.

Or is that yesterday morning’s toast?

The knock somehow becomes even louder, jangling Raffi’s head and hurting her brain. 

She stumbles to the door, flings it open. 

“What do you want?”

For a second, Kathryn stands there, knuckles raised, the gold band encircling her left ring finger prominent against her pale skin. Then her eyes narrow. 

“I want you to answer your phone, but you don’t, so here I am.”

The NYNEX telephone company cut off Raffi’s service last week.

It’s Friday.

Is it Friday?

Yeah, it’s Friday. Early evening and Kathryn is in a skirt and heels with a matching purse as if she just came from work. 

Well, she probably did. 

“I apologize if my failure to remunerate NYNEX in a timely fashion caused you any inconvenience.” Raffi’s hip leans against the doorframe. “But, as you know, I got fired two months ago.”

“It was three months.” Kathryn’s arms cross just below breasts Raffi has pretended not to notice for years. “And are you going to invite me in?”

Raffi steps to the side.

She can practically feel Kathryn’s eyes sweep the small living area. 

Empty wine bottles. 

Wheezing air conditioner riffling the open pages of newspapers and magazines. 

A crumpled map on the floor, its torn corners Scotch-taped to the wall.

Raffi has the urge to point out that the bed in her room is made and the oven is clean. But then she might have to admit she’s slept on the sofa for the last … three months? And she’s never used the oven.

Kathryn’s hand reaches for the map, smooths it against the wall.

Rwanda.

Raffi’s eyes burn with tears she refuses to shed in front of someone she respects, but barely knows.

“Jean-Luc’s plan wouldn’t have worked.” Kathryn pulls tape to reattach the map. “But you shouldn’t have lost your job because he tried to bully the subcommittee into doing things his way.”

“Our way.” Raffi’s jaw sets. “I helped JL formulate that plan. With enough peacekeeper contributions from member states, the UN could have fulfilled _its_ job — maintenance of international peace and security.”

“How? The plan didn’t identify a way to protect our own people.” With the map once again on the wall, Kathryn turns to face Raffi. “With ten peacekeepers already killed, what, exactly, were additional forces supposed to survive on? Hope?”

Raffi blinks rapidly. She knows her plan’s weak points. Every one of them has ricocheted around her mind, lighting up her brain like a speeded-up pinball machine of self-loathing that could only be subdued with wine. Yes, new forces would be subject to the same dangers as the original peacekeepers. But Raffi and JL had believed enough officers on the ground could have created order, found a way to prevent the genocide that swept Rwandan Tutsis like a supernova.

Kathryn’s fingers rub her forehead. 

“I’m not here to rehash this. I’m here because I’ve secured positions within the UN for the rest of Jean-Luc’s team and I want you to come back, too. We need people like you.”

Lavelle? Taurik? The Crushers? They all agreed to go back?

Raffi shakes her head and pain shoots across her temples. 

Pain shoots deeper than that.

“I’m never going back. The UN allowed ethnic genocide.”

The UN had been Raffi’s dream job. 

“The subcommittee wanted immediate refinements to the plan, but Jean-Luc said it was his way or the highway and then clutched his pearls when he didn’t win.” Kathryn’s head tilts. “The Security Council needs analysts like you who can see patterns, suggest solutions, work with subcommittees to find answers. Jean-Luc stomped off like a spoiled child, hopped the Concorde, and won’t talk to anyone. You deserve better than that.”

Raffi didn’t know JL was gone.

She thought she was the reason more than 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis were killed in their homes, in their churches, in their streets. She thought if her plan had been better, those people would still be alive.

But the man she thought was her boss and her friend, he abandoned the hope to save those people. Raffi has been drunk or hungover, crying every time she reads the newspaper, falling further and further behind on her bills. And it was JL who dealt the death blow, not her.

Raffi’s chest aches.

She hunches forward, breathes into her cupped hands, scrunches her eyes shut to try to stop the hurt from leaking out.

“Hey.” Kathryn’s fingers are light on Raffi’s shoulder. “Let me help you.”

“I’m not going back to the UN.” Raffi’s own voice echoes in her hands. She tries to ignore how she’s muffled herself, tries to ignore the tears pricking behind her closed eyelids, tries to ignore the tingle of her skin under Kathryn’s fingers. “People died because of egos in a subcommittee meeting. I can’t — I can’t —”

“I understand.” There’s a squeeze on Raffi’s shoulder, then cool air. “Let me take you out to dinner. We’ll talk. Okay?”

A few months ago, Raffi would have thrilled at an invitation from this woman with copper-colored hair and deep blue eyes. They had been on different subcommittees within the UN Security Council, rarely interacting aside from speaking in the same briefing or sharing the mirror in the ladies’ room. But Kathryn’s intellect impressed the hell out of Raffi and, when Raffi thought Kathryn wasn’t looking, Raffi would let her gaze linger on high cheekbones, a dusting of freckles barely visible through foundation makeup, and long, elegant fingers — one of which held a wedding band so that’s when Raffi would refocus on her work.

Dinner probably isn’t a good idea.

But Raffi hasn’t talked to anyone in so long, much less someone who brings insight and understanding — someone Raffi had been curious to get to know better before Rwanda. And now, for the first time in months, Raffi finds herself able to consider a life after Rwanda.

Raffi takes a deep breath.

“All right. Let me get changed.”

She heads to her bedroom, wrenches open her small closet, looks past the empty spaces from when Keiko moved out. It’s been — damn, it’s been a year. A year of losing Keiko and Gabe and now JL.

Dinner. Clothes. She needs to choose. 

Skirts.

Trousers.

Blouses.

Okay, it’s July. It’s got to be hot as hell outside.

Raffi pushes off her shorts and tank top, thanks the God she doesn’t believe in that she shaved her legs and underarms when she showered a few days ago, and pulls on a thin dress with short sleeves. She flicks on the light in the bathroom and winces. Bloodshot eyes. Limp hair. She’s thirty-five years old and usually looks a few years younger than her age, not older.

Raffi reaches for a makeup brush.

Ten minutes later, her hair pulled back and an artificial glow on her cheeks, Raffi’s hand shakes only a little when she locks her front door.

“Do you have a preference for where to go?” Kathryn pushes the elevator button for the lobby. 

Raffi shrugs, the strap from her purse digging into her shoulder. She usually gets food delivered from one of the Greek restaurants nearby. The apartment building’s broken door lock means Raffi doesn’t even have to buzz anyone in.

On the street, there’s a cab — unusual for Astoria, Queens. This is a low-rise suburb compared to the skyscrapered city on Manhattan island. The N subway line has a station just a few blocks away and most people ride the train.

But when Kathryn opens the yellow door, Raffi understands this cab has been waiting — with the meter running.

“Thank you for your patience,” Kathryn tells the driver. “Mulberry Street. Lower Manhattan. Take the bridge, not the tunnel.”

Little Italy and the scenic route to get there. Touristy, but all right. 

The cab jerks forward.

“You’re a native New Yorker?” Kathryn’s legs cross and Raffi looks out the window. 

“Yes. Grew up on the Upper West Side.” Buildings streak past and Raffi struggles to think through her hangover. “You’re from Iowa?”

“Indiana. Hoosier basketball, not nation-leading caucuses.”

“Sorry. The four states that start with ‘i’ can be ...” Raffi gestures on either side of her head, fingers splayed, “... _ay-yai-yai_.”

Kathryn laughs and the corners of Raffi’s mouth twitch into a grin. She’s never heard Kathryn laugh before.

As the cab makes its way across the East River and down Manhattan island, Raffi recognizes a pattern. Kathryn will ask a question — “You graduated from Columbia University, right?” — and Raffi will confirm and ask a similar question in return — “You went to Northwestern?” — and Kathryn will volley back a response that seems humble but actually makes the conversation more generic — “Just another farm girl who found her way into the lecture halls.”

The cab pulls up to a curb.

“Thank you.” Kathryn folds cash from her wallet into the plexiglass pass-through for the driver. Raffi follows her into a restaurant with white tablecloths and piped-in accordion music. They get a table right away.

Any New Yorker knows it should take a while to be seated without a reservation on a Friday night — unless the maître d' knows a customer will tip well.

Raffi accepts a menu with prices in round dollars, no cents, and notices Kathryn skims her own menu, not reading with the care of someone unfamiliar with the choices. 

“You eat here a lot?”

Kathryn shrugs. “The UN keeps me busy, so it’s takeout or a restaurant most nights.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Raffi’s jaw flexes. “I asked if you eat here a lot.”

“I suppose I do.” Kathryn’s menu lowers. “Maybe once a month or so? I didn’t intend to upset you.”

Shit. 

“It’s not that. I just ...” Raffi doesn’t know how to say she wants to have a conversation, not a verbal battle through Kathryn’s evasions.

Kathryn sets down her menu. “Look, Raffi, you said you don’t want to come back to the UN. I accept that. What I don’t accept is someone with your intelligence wasting away without bettering the world. I want to help you find a place for yourself.”

So that’s all this is. Career advice. Not the beginning of a friendship.

“I don’t need your charity.” Raffi’s chest is too tight.

“Fine. No charity. Some pasta fasul, though?”

Kathryn cocks an eyebrow and half-grins — and, though she’s disappointed, Raffi figures she does need a job so she may as well stop fighting, stop analyzing, stop even trying to anticipate, and just let Kathryn take charge.

And then everything gets easier. 

Yes, Kathryn quizzes Raffi during the entire meal, but it’s a smooth interrogation, like being stung by a silky mosquito, and Raffi answers questions between bites of orecchiette and broccoli rabe.

“One sister. She’s a doctor in Brooklyn Heights. Our dad is a doctor, so it’s a family thing.”

“I was probably inspired to study international relations because of my parents. My mom is white and my dad is Black. They encouraged us to see beyond stereotypes.”

“My best friend, Cris, lives in TriBeCa, so, yes, I go to lower Manhattan pretty often and feel comfortable there.”

After Kathryn pulls crisp bills from her wallet and tells the waiter to keep the change, she clicks a ballpoint pen and scrawls something on the back of a business card. She hands the card to Raffi. 

There’s an address in lower Manhattan, a time of 9 o’clock on Tuesday morning, and a name: Julian Bashir.

***

On the cab ride home, Kathryn’s eyes are closed and her lips are bitten together. She’s soaring on waves of perfectly kinked honey-blonde hair. She’s arcing around a hip that leaned on a doorframe. She’s floating up and down smooth, brown legs, and lingering on long fingers that twirled a forkful of broccoli rabe. 

Kathryn’s eyes snap open. Her posture stiffens and she hooks one knee over the other.

Touching Raffi’s shoulder was a mistake.

Though it certainly was an exquisite, electric error in judgment.

If Raffi doesn’t change her mind and ask to come back to the UN, could the Human Rights Committee ruling come into play here?

An actual relationship. 

Kathryn is forty-six years old.

She never thought she would have a chance for something like this.

The cab slows for a red light and Kathryn reminds herself that she needs a lot more answers before she can even consider moving forward. Besides, Raffi may be brilliant and beautiful, but Jean-Luc’s shortsightedness has left Raffi wounded. Maybe Kathryn shouldn’t even try.

But one thing Kathryn knows for sure is wounds never truly heal — a person just has to learn to live around them. 


	2. How Did You Know?

Raffi pats her lower back with a paper towel. The subway station was a sweatbath and the walk wasn’t much better.

But the air conditioning in the lower Manhattan office building is good and she’s wearing her lucky dress. Raffi tosses the towel in the trash and studies her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She hasn’t had alcohol in four days and she’s quit cold turkey enough times that the queasiness and tremors were old friends. Her eyes and skin are clear. Her mind is nimble. Her hair kept its shape despite the humidity and her makeup didn’t melt off. 

“You’ve got this,” Raffi tells herself, one hand on the countertop, the other holding a Manila folder with copies of her resume. 

Time to meet Julian Bashir.

“Ms. Musiker?” The secretary looks up as Raffi pushes through the office doors.

“Yes.”

“Good morning. Dr. Bashir is ready for you.”

Raffi is ten minutes early. She figured she would have a twenty-minute wait. 

But she follows the secretary down a hallway into a bright office with a wall of windows, a dartboard, and a skinny, dark-haired, tan-skinned man standing as he holds out his hand.

“Dr. Bashir, I presume?” Raffi matches his smile.

The handshake is solid, professional.

Raffi doesn’t let herself think about her so-similar first handshake with JL.

“Please, call me Julian. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Raffi. You come very highly recommended.”

At the restaurant, Kathryn had been vague about what, exactly, a job for Raffi might be at Doctors Without Borders. But she had insisted that Julian, the organization’s executive director for the United States, would find something suitable.

“I, uh, never actually worked directly with Kathryn.” Raffi sits as Julian does, him on one side of a desk and her on the other, the folder with her resume on her lap.

Julian waves a hand as if a flick of his wrist could dissipate Raffi’s worries. “She made that clear.”

He starts talking about himself, about how he had his choice of any job but wanted to enable true, frontier medicine.

“This is where heroes are made.” He practically dances in his chair with excitement. “Doctors Without Borders sends medical personnel into the wilderness, into the desert, into the cities teeming with needy people — and our doctors save lives.”

Raffi wonders if Julian is going to hit her up for a donation.

Her face must give her away. 

“I’m sorry.” Julian’s head shakes. “I get rather passionate about the work. I want you to be our humanitarian affairs advisor. If you accept the job, you would provide analytical and strategic support for advocacy efforts as well as keep tabs on developments at the UN, World Bank, US federal government — that sort of thing. It’s a lot of context analysis and suggestions for what we should do next. Your office would be down the hall and —”

“Excuse me.” Raffi holds her folder so it won’t fall to the floor as she leans forward. “I thought this was a job interview and I didn’t even know for what job. You’re telling me this position is mine, today, if I accept?”

Julian’s forehead furrows. “You can start today. Tomorrow. Next week. Your work experience, your familial knowledge about doctors, your graduation with honors from one of the best universities in the country for international relations — all this speaks for itself. Kathryn had references sent from a few of your UN co-workers and it seems you’re a whip-smart team player. Why waste time with an interview?”

Head spinning, Raffi agrees to an eye-popping salary, a Thursday start, and international influence that both thrills and terrifies her. She visits her new office, meets colleagues, signs paperwork. The elevator downstairs is unoccupied, so she lets her hips wriggle in excitement.

A few blocks away, she finds an open pay phone. Raffi pushes coins through the slot and dials Cris’ work number. Cars ruble past and she shouts through the tinny connection to tell him everything.

“ _¡Excelente!_ ” he says. “A celebration is in order!”

“I start Thursday if you want to go out tonight.”

“Is it okay if I bring Emmet?”

Raffi pastes on a smile Cris can’t see and she doesn’t feel. Cris has a new boyfriend every few months and that’s fine, but Raffi is impatient for Emmet to disappear from her life.

“The more the merrier. Tell him I’m gonna be dry, though.”

Cris’ laugh flows into Raffi’s ear. “He’ll drink enough for both of us. I’ll abstain in solidarity.”

They don’t need to discuss where to meet. The Monster is their spot — a gay club in the village area of lower Manhattan with a piano bar upstairs and a disco downstairs. Cris and Raffi have partied at The Monster since they used fake IDs in high school. Like most gay clubs, the clientele is mostly men, but there were plenty of times Raffi left The Monster hand in hand with a beautiful woman. 

Before Keiko and the UN and so many other mistakes. 

Raffi has come to accept that the UN’s failure in Rwanda was more JL’s fault than hers. But it wasn’t JL’s fault that Raffi needed a few glasses of wine to calm down after a long day, that she would lose entire weekends to sleep and alcohol, that her drinking drove away her girlfriend and her son. 

She hangs up the phone a little too roughly, then calls her parents and her sister. She leaves Gabe a message she doesn’t expect him to return. 

But Raffi really should talk with one more person. 

She pulls out the business card with writing scrawled across the back. Her thumb traces the looping letters, then she flips the card to the front and fishes in her wallet for more change.

“United Nations Security Council, Committee on Peacekeeping Operations’ US Liaison's Office. How may I help you?”

Raffi knows that haughty tone. “Vorik? Vorik Taurik?”

“Raffi?”

“Yeah! You work for Kathryn now?”

Raffi presses the phone to her ear as Vorik’s voice drops to a whisper.

“She helped everybody after Picard left. He didn’t even pack up his office; he just walked away. She called me, Sam, both Crushers — Wes and Beverly — and said she would find us positions within the UN. She can work a system like no one I’ve ever seen. Where have you been? She’s had at least three different jobs set up for you.”

Raffi’s face has gone hot, and not from the weather or exhaust pouring out of cars lumbering by. “Yeah, I had a tough time. She found me something, though. Is she in?”

“She’s just finishing with the ambassador from Qatar. I’ll have her call you.”

Raffi reads off the number printed on the pay phone. She paces while she waits. Questions bounce around her brain, but she needs more information to even formulate how to ask them.

The phone’s ring is shrill. 

“Hello.”

“Raffi!” Kathryn is easy to hear over the traffic. “I hope you’re calling from your new office.”

Raffi grins. “I’m at a pay phone, but I did take a perfect job at Doctors Without Borders. How did you know?”

There’s a chuckle. “I play tennis with Julian. He’s been looking to fill a few positions. He was so excited to meet with you.”

“Well, thank you so much.” The silver phone cord twists in Raffi’s fingers. “I’m not sure how to repay you.”

“No need. Just keep doing good work.”

Raffi waits to be politely hung up on.

The silence stretches. 

“I’m celebrating with a couple of friends tonight,” Raffi blurts. “Would you like to join us?”

Silence stretches again and Raffi wonders if the phone has gone dead.

She speaks anyway, just in case. 

“It’s fine if you don’t want to. I mean, I understand. Of course. But if you’re free, we’re going to a club called The Monster. It’s —”

“What time and do you meet outside or inside?” Kathryn’s tone is clipped, businesslike. 

Raffi stammers out answers and the phone line goes dead. 

***

Kathryn stares at the phone. 

She didn’t say yes, did she? She just asked Raffi for the information. Damn, it wasn’t easy to mention tennis, to open up about her personal life. But then came this invitation like a reward.

The Monster. It’s a good place. Strong drinks. Dark dance floor. Women who go there tend to know what they want.

So many times at the UN when she felt Raffi’s stare, Kathryn wondered if Raffi was just looking or actually willing to connect, physically and emotionally. Raffi’s employment file lists a son, but Kathryn of all people knows observation is more important than the printed page.

And how goddamn dangerous all this can be. 


	3. Was I Mistaken?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Appreciation to laurita_ST for double-checking/fixing my Spanish.

“ _¿Es bonita?_ ” 

Emmet speaks more English than he lets on, and Raffi refuses to indulge him the way Cris does.

“Yeah, she’s pretty. But she’s married, so it doesn’t matter. If she actually shows up, it’s as a friend.”

On the sidewalk in front of The Monster, Raffi tries to force away memories of the ladies’ room at the UN when she and Kathryn would wash their hands at neighboring sinks. There would be rushing water and soap bubbles and Raffi would peek away from her dark hands to see Kathryn’s pale ones tumble over and around each other, always with the gold band gleaming from the left ring finger.

Besides, Kathryn is all business, all the time. She won’t show up. 

But then legs Raffi tells herself she shouldn’t recognize swing out from a cab. 

The streetlight catches copper-colored hair, bare arms, and the curves of breasts under a black minidress that hits at mid-thigh. Lipstick significantly darker than anything Raffi has seen on Kathryn before arcs into a smile when Kathryn sees Raffi.

“ _Eso no es un amiga. ¿Estás muerta?_ ” Emmet breathes into Raffi’s ear. 

“No, I’m not dead, and, yes, she’s just a friend.” Raffi crosses her arms and tells herself that she’s not going to make Kathryn uncomfortable. Raffi’s attraction is her own problem to manage.

“Am I the last one or are we waiting for someone?” Kathryn strides over smoothly despite heels that must be at least three inches high.

Raffi’s skin tingles. “Cris is on his way. His boss likes to keep him late —”

“ _Vandermeer es un bastardo pero tú eres encantadora._ ” Emmet takes Kathryn’s hand and presses it to his heart. 

Her lips bitten together in a grin, Kathryn turns to Raffi.

“He said Vandermeer — that’s Cris’ boss — is a bastard, but you’re lovely.”

“I got that,” Kathryn pulls her hand away and pats Emmet’s cheek, “but what’s your name, flatterer?”

Raffi introduces them, and Cris arrives as Raffi adds that Emmet can speak and understand English. Emmet’s scowl at Raffi dissolves as he greets Cris with a kiss. Not a quick peck, either, a full-on kiss on the lips complete with Emmet’s fingers twined in Cris’ dark hair.

Raffi watches Kathryn. In Raffi’s experience, straight people, no matter how open-minded they seem, often flinch at gay affection. But Kathryn looks at the two men admiringly, as if they’re heroes back from war. 

Could she be some kind of voyeur?

When Cris and Emmet pull apart, she says, “Nice to meet you, Cris. I’m Kathryn. Let’s get in line.”

The queue isn’t bad — it is a Tuesday, after all — and Kathryn and Raffi stand next to each other with Cris and Emmet in front of them. Raffi smooths her skirt, double-checks buttons on her shirt, pats her hair.

“I assumed you chose this location, Raffi, because tonight is a celebration of your new job. Was I mistaken?”

“No.” Raffi is trying to ignore a familiar scent — a soap or a shampoo, she isn’t sure. It’s delicate and linked to memories of UN briefings, hand-washings, and fingers touching her bare shoulder. “I mean, Cris and I always come here. He found it first, but The Monster is kind of a tradition for us. I like it.”

Kathryn looks like she wants to ask another question — something Raffi has become accustomed to — but the rough voice of a bouncer demands ID.

The driver’s license Kathryn gives him is for Indiana, not New York.

A lot of people who move to the city don’t bother getting New York driver’s licenses. Car ownership is rare, particularly in Manhattan where Raffi assumes Kathryn lives. 

But the UN usually requires its employees to have up-to-date government records. 

Cris pays everyone’s cover charge and leads them in. Lighting in The Monster isn’t the best and the brown-on-red decor makes everything seem dumpier. But Raffi loves how the music from the disco floats up the stairs to layer over the baby grand at the piano bar, how the weekday crowd is chill, how the bartenders are halfway decent human beings — for New York bartenders, that is.

Cris finds two open barstools at a table and motions for Raffi and Kathryn to sit.

“You aren’t a dancing group?” Kathryn hoists herself onto the cracked, vinyl seat. 

In Spanish, Emmet says he likes to dance, but Cris and Raffi are like a little old couple because they enjoy singing along to the show tunes at the piano.

“Hey, we were at this bar before you were and we’ll be here after you’re gone.” Cris slings an arm around Raffi’s shoulders. “Don’t pick on my best girl.”

Raffi leans into Cris. While Raffi always thinks she’ll spend the rest of her life with every woman she dates, it can be fun to be a spectator to Cris’ shifting appetites.

Kathryn’s nose crinkles, just for a second, then her smile is back. “We’re here to celebrate, right? I’ll get a round. Who wants what?”

Raffi’s mouth opens to protest, to say that Kathryn has been incredibly generous already, but Cris says, “Waters for Raffi and me,” and Emmet flashes a devilish grin and asks for a Cuba Libre.

There’s a crisp nod, then Kathryn slides off her barstool and elbows her way to the bar. The bartender turns and Raffi sees it’s the worst one, a purple-lipsticked asshole who insults almost everyone. She’s ready to stand and help Kathryn out when the bartender claps his hands delightedly, leans over the bar to grab Kathryn by the shoulders, and plants a kiss on her lips.

“There’s someone Q actually likes?” Cris breathes into Raffi’s ear. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

Raffi stares. “Me neither, man, me neither.”

When she gets back with two waters, a Cuba Libre, and a whiskey, Cris asks Kathryn how she charmed a jerk like Q. 

She rolls her eyes.

“That strange bartender — did you say his name is Q? He must have me confused with someone else.”

They toast to Raffi’s new job and Kathryn waves away Raffi’s appreciation. The group chats about the heatwave outside, Cris gets started talking about his work with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Raffi and Cris join in the singing a few times. And even though Kathryn isn’t the most talkative and even though her blue eyes seem to focus mostly on the whiskey tumbler in her hands, Raffi figures maybe that’s how she is in a social setting. Then Cris buys another round and Kathryn’s whiskey disappears more quickly than it did the first time and she tells Emmet that he should really show her the dance floor. When they’re gone, Raffi tries to sing along to the music, to sip her water, to chat with Cris. But her eyes wander hoping Kathryn will come back and the evening’s conversations play over and over in her mind, and Raffi decides maybe Kathryn was upset and that’s why she was quiet. Maybe someone upset her — and that’s unacceptable so Raffi heads toward the bar.

“What do you want?” 

She would take Q’s glare personally, but he treats everyone with the same disdain. Almost everyone.

“Water and an apology for my friend. That woman you kissed earlier tonight, how dare you make someone uncomfortable like that?”

“Kathy?” Q pulls a bottle of water from under the bar. “She’s a dear. I saw her bring drinks to your group and you’re fortunate to finally have some quality company in this place.”

Raffi’s head shakes. “You’re wrong. She said you had her confused with someone else — and, besides, since when do you like anyone, especially a woman who wears a wedding band?”

Q plucks the cash from Raffi’s fingers and hands her the water bottle. “You have what you came for. Run along now.”

He snaps his fingers in her face and Raffi doesn’t have enough cash to buy another water, so she takes the not-so-subtle hint to leave.

But instead of singing with Cris, she convinces him to go with her to the downstairs disco. 

“We’re not kids, Raffi.” His fingers rake his hair as she pushes him toward the stairs. “This isn’t our scene anymore.”

“We’re celebrating my new job, right? Well this is how I want to celebrate.”

Cris groans. 

Raffi pulls him onto the dance floor. She’s looking for Kathryn and Emmet, but it’s dark and there are strobe lights and masses of heads and shoulders moving in different directions. The music is so loud that she can’t hear Cris even as he shouts in her ear. Finally, he grabs her head and points it in the proper direction — and Raffi sees a flash of Kathryn with Emmet dancing behind her and a dark curtain of hair blocking the face of a woman who, gently but eagerly, is kissing Kathryn’s neck.

***

Kathryn promises herself that she’ll kill Q. 

Some other time.

Because right now there are soft lips on her neck and her knees are trembling and she’s tight between her legs. This woman — what’s her name? Belinda? B’Elanna? Brianna? She’s amazing. Raffi clearly likes to look but not touch. All that talk about Cris choosing The Monster and Raffi being his best girl. The two of them will probably sit on barstools upstairs together forever. Kathryn should have known.

It’s a disappointment. A big one. But the Human Rights Committee ruling means Kathryn can live her life, Raffi or no Raffi.

Her eyes fly open.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled three months earlier in the case of Toonen v. Australia. The decision stated sexual orientation was protected under international treaty provisions and a person couldn’t be fired simply for being gay. 

But what if there’s something worse than being fired? What if Raffi spreads rumors and Kathryn loses her influence, her ability to actually do her job even if she’s technically still employed?

Fear twists her stomach and Kathryn pushes Belinda-B’Elanna-Brianna away. It’s time to go home. If he’s already asleep, Kathryn will wake him up. He always helps her feel better about things.


	4. I Suppose That Was Confusing

Raffi leaves messages for Kathryn at the UN but doesn’t get a call back. For a week, Kathryn is traveling and Raffi figures maybe Kathryn will call when she returns. But she doesn’t and Raffi leaves more messages until Vorik snaps that the committee liaison is very busy and will call when she has time.

Raffi looks Kathryn up in the phone book, but there are five pages of Janeways and none with the name Kathryn or first initial K. Raffi wonders if the listing could be under Kathryn’s husband’s name or initial. Maybe they aren’t listed at all.

At the office, Julian is full of superlatives for Raffi’s work — “marvelous insights” and “tremendously impressive” — and Raffi has the suspicion his ego extends to those around him. The better job she does, the more he can praise himself for hiring her.

That’s okay.

She enjoys digging through databases, polishing off periodicals, tearing through transcripts. When she recommends sending more doctors to war zones in Chechnya, Julian immediately approves and has Raffi’s plan faxed to Doctors Without Borders’ international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

So work is good.

On weekends, she meets Emmet and Cris for brunch but she skips mimosas. Once, Raffi asks Emmet what he and Kathryn talked about at the club before Kathryn breezed past where Cris and Raffi had reclaimed barstools by the piano and announced she would be going home. Emmet replies, “ _¿Después de los Cuba Libres, quién se acuerda?_ ” — “After Cuba Libres, who can remember?” — and laughs while Raffi’s jaw sets.

She tells herself that she’s fine. Her phone is back on, she’s caught up on bills, and her sister and parents say they’re proud of her. The apartment is tidy again and Raffi even peeks into Gabe’s old room a few times and doesn’t cry. She buys new clothes and puts them where Keiko’s things were.

But when she tries to sleep, Raffi sees a split-second between flashes of a strobe light and it’s Kathryn’s tipped-back head, closed eyes, parted lips — and, yes, Emmet dancing in the background as some woman makes out with Kathryn’s neck.

If Kathryn likes women, damnit, Raffi wants to be liked. Or at least rejected after having tried. 

One afternoon, Raffi dials the UN switchboard. She needs someone smart enough to help her, but dumb enough not to ask any questions.

Fortunately, he recognizes her voice as soon as she’s put through.

“Raffi! How have you been?”

“Good, Wesley, good.” She leans back in her chair. Fake relaxation can help her sound serene. “And you? How’s your mom?”

“I’ve been traveling a lot. I’m glad you caught me. My mom’s fine, still doing her community theater stuff after work. What’s up?”

“Not much. I’ve been at Doctors Without Borders for a couple of months now and we could use updated bios for some of the UN committee liaisons and working group leaders. Could you fax me Patterson, Brand, Paris, Janeway, Nechayev, and Hendricks?”

Raffi doesn’t have to hold her breath for long. 

“Sure. Do you want Chapman, too?”

“You’re the best, Wes.”

When the fax machine spits out the bios, Raffi brings the long curl of thermal paper to her office. Her scissors slice a page per bio and Raffi files all of them — except the one she presses flat on her desk to study.

She knew Kathryn had been at the UN for a long time, but Raffi hadn’t known that Kathryn started as an intern after completing a master’s degree in international relations. Raffi had wanted to intern at the UN, but she got pregnant with Gabe during her senior year in college. By the time Raffi was ready to start working, the opportunity was gone. She spent time at nonprofits all over the city before getting in at the UN.

Raffi knew UN liaisons visited countries all over the world, but Kathryn’s list is so long that even Raffi’s trained eyes begin to blur. Raffi had wanted to travel more, but JL always took those assignments himself and brought a Crusher or two with him.

Raffi focuses and reminds herself that the trick to analyzing a bio is to read beyond the words. Bios are approved by the person they are about, so the information someone chooses to include can offer insight into their values. But this bio is a recitation of job titles in perfect order to promotions and a series of thick paragraphs detailing travel. The only personal clue is, “Kathryn lives in Manhattan with her husband and dog.”

The interesting, dynamic woman Raffi believes Kathryn to be is not reflected in a document Kathryn herself allowed the UN to publish about her.

Raffi releases the thermal paper and it snaps into a cylinder on her desk. She hurries down the hall before she loses her nerve.

“Julian,” Raffi pokes her head into his office, “are you busy?”

“For you, my dear, never.” He pushes his computer keyboard away and swivels to face her. “How may I help you?”

Raffi pretends her heart isn’t hammering. 

“I remember Kathryn mentioning that the two of you play tennis. I was wondering if I could tag along sometime and see her. It’s been a while and I so much appreciate her putting in a good word with you for me to work here.”

Julian waves away the gratitude. “I’m the one who’s appreciative, but I play with whichever one of them shows up. I never know in advance.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t follow.” Raffi’s hand finds the back of her neck and hangs on.

“Ah, yes. I suppose that was confusing.” Julian’s forehead furrows. “What I meant is Kathryn and her husband both play tennis. One of them always is there to meet me. But my standing appointment is not with her in particular.”

“What’s he like?” 

Raffi’s cheeks are warm. She’s aware of her … fascination? crush? … on a married woman. But Raffi knows what she saw at The Monster and that makes Kathryn’s husband a scab that Raffi wants to rip off to see what’s underneath.

“He’s, uh.” Julian’s mouth twists to the side. “Well, he’s quite the gentleman, I suppose. Would you like to come to the club? I’ll be going after work today.”

As if Raffi hadn’t noticed the zippered tennis racket case and gym bag that Julian brings on Thursdays.

“That would be great,” Raffi says. “Thanks.”

A few hours later, Raffi learns the huge, white bubble under the Manhattan side of the Queensboro Bridge seems even larger inside, dwarfing eight, clay tennis courts. The air conditioner hums, but humidity settles into Raffi skin and hair. There are smells of sweat and tennis ball rubber.

Julian disappears into the men’s locker room.

Raffi waits just inside the green-awninged entrance. She scrutinizes every man who walks in.

Too fat. 

Too skinny. 

Too tall. 

Too short. 

Too old. 

Too young.

She has no idea what he looks like, of course. But her instincts reject every man who steps through the door.

Then there’s copper-colored hair and a gold band on a left ring finger and the lips that Raffi can’t get out of her mind open like petals on a rosebud as Kathryn hisses, “Raffi Musiker, what the hell are you doing here?”

Raffi backs into the side of the tennis club entryway. 

“I — I —”

“Eight phone messages and I finally tell my assistant to politely tell you to _stop calling_ and now you just happen to be at a location I frequent?” Kathryn is about four inches shorter than Raffi but she seems to loom over the taller woman. “Snooping is a waste of your time, do you understand?”

Walls spin. 

“What?”

Kathryn’s jaw twitches. “ _Leave me the fuck alone._ Now.” She turns, and pure instinct sends Raffi’s hand shooting out to grasp Kathryn’s wrist. Raffi speaks as quickly as she can.

“I apologize for calling too much, but, where I come from, people say what the other person did to piss them off. Could you tell me, please?”

But Kathryn’s blue eyes don’t meet Raffi’s brown ones. Instead, she’s staring at dark fingers that cling to her pale wrist as if the delicate bones are a life preserver. 

Kathryn’s breath shudders.

Raffi’s chest rises and falls. 

Then Kathryn’s face jerks up and she rattles off an address on the Upper East Side. “I can be there in about two hours. Can you wait?”

Raffi nods. She loosens her grip and Kathryn strides into the ladies’ locker room without a backward glance. 

Raffi has the time, so she walks. She’s still in her work shoes, but Raffi can handle New York City streets in any footwear. As she maneuvers through crowds on the sidewalk, Raffi mutters the address over and over. Finally, she swings her purse forward, finds a pen, and writes the numbers on the back of a receipt. 

Five blocks to go. 

Four. 

Three. 

Two. 

One. 

It’s a coffee shop. 

***

Kathryn slams the tennis ball.

Raffi is trying to get information to hurt her or extort her. 

Raffi touched her wrist and it still tingles.

Raffi is the worst. 

Raffi is the best.

Slam, slam, slam. 


	5. Grey and Blue

Raffi hasn’t had dinner, so she buys a cup of coffee and a strawberry danish to tide her over. She chooses a table near enough to the propped-open door that the September breeze floats in along with snippets of pedestrian conversation and horn honks — traffic noises that help distract her from her nerves.

The cup has dregs and the plate crumbs when a cab pulls up and achingly familiar legs step out. 

Raffi waits for invective, for angry words and accusations. There are customers scattered at the coffee shop’s few tables, but traffic sounds make it impossible for Raffi to hear them. She expects Kathryn’s voice to slice through the din and bounce off the walls. 

But, when she sits, a gym bag and tennis racket case fall from bent fingers to the linoleum floor. The heels of Kathryn’s hands press to her closed eyes and her tennis skirt droops over the sides of her chair.

Raffi leans forward. “Can I, uh, get you a cup of coffee?”

Kathryn nods.

“Cream and sugar?”

Kathryn’s head shakes.

When Raffi returns with a black coffee, Kathryn takes the blue-and-white cup and holds it under her nose. There’s a deep inhale and Raffi thinks of when Gabe was little. He would be so excited to have a new toy that he wouldn’t want Raffi to open the box.

But Kathryn tips the coffee cup and soon a lipstick crescent is on the rim and the dark liquid is half gone. 

“Thank you,” she says. 

“Hey,” Raffi tries to twist the corners of her mouth upwards, “now you’re fortified to tell me why you hate me, right?”

“I don’t hate you, Raffi.” Kathryn’s voice is soft, gentle. “I just spent nearly two hours hitting a tennis ball that I wanted to be your head and I’m done, okay? I had a lot of things I wanted to say, but the bottom line is I regret very deeply going out with you and your friends and it is my fervent hope that you will continue your discretion on this matter.”

And the truth hits Raffi so hard her breath catches.

“You’re worried I’m going to tell people that you like women?”

Coffee ripples in the cup that Kathryn holds with both hands. “I know you have problems with the UN, Raffi, but the Human Rights Committee ruling on the Toonen case was correct and —”

Raffi had been deep in planning for Rwanda when the Toonen decision made headlines. She was pleased with the committee’s ruling, of course, for its global implications, but Raffi had never heard of anyone in New York City being fired for sexual orientation. Raffi doesn’t talk much about her personal life at work because she gets hyper-focused on her job. Her biggest fear isn’t being outed, it’s being dumped because she disappointed someone yet again.

But the Toonen case was a critical win for a lot of people who were scared that their private lives could cost them their careers.

And Raffi realizes she is sitting at a table with one of them.

“You turn on the faucet with your right wrist.” Raffi presses a hand to the nervous flutters in her stomach. “At the UN. In the ladies’ room. You take two squirts of soap, not one. You use a paper towel to turn the water off and you use the same paper towel to open the door, then you throw the paper towel away — hook shot into the garbage can. You make it every time.”

Kathryn exhales a shaky breath. 

“I have a son. Gabriel. Gabe. He’s fourteen years old and he hates me because he thinks I was too intent on saving the world or finishing a bottle of wine to spend time with him. And he was right. I have a history of drinking too much and Gabe’s father has full custody. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, big and small, and I guess one of them was thinking you were straight as an arrow. But I saw that woman kissing you at The Monster and I’ve wanted to kiss you that same way ever since.”

Raffi expects Kathryn to stand up and leave. 

She expects Kathryn to tell her to get lost. 

She doesn’t expect Kathryn to whisper, “Grey and blue.”

Raffi’s hand presses even harder to her stomach. “Excuse me?”

“When I went to your apartment in Astoria. You had on grey shorts and a blue tank top with a red wine stain on the left side.”

Raffi’s hand begins to loosen.

“I’m not stupid, Raffi. I saw you looking at me at the UN. But, regardless of how lovely they are, I don’t go out with women I work with. Then came the Human Rights Committee ruling and when you said you didn’t want to go back to the UN, you became,” Kathryn’s eyes close as she bites her lips together, “a possibility. But when you said Cris found the club and he called you his best girl, I figured ...”

“No.” Raffi leans forward. “I just didn’t think I had a chance with you. I’ve met plenty of people who hide their sexuality, but you really threw me. It’s strange because I can usually —”

And both their heads turn as someone enters the coffee shop. It’s a man with a dog leash attached to a very happy Irish Setter and Raffi knows, she _knows_ , the man is Kathryn’s husband.

The hand that isn’t holding a dog leash goes to the man’s heart.

“Raffi?” he says. “Oh, this is wonderful!”

Raffi looks to Kathryn and her blue eyes shine with affection for the man.

Raffi likes women and, occasionally, a man, but she’s not into couples. Other people are, and that’s fine for them, but Raffi isn’t comfortable with more than one partner at a time.

She grabs her purse strap, tenses to run. “You know me?”

“Sorry.” The man half-grins. “I’ve heard your name often and was hoping for something like this. I’ll let you two chat.”

“No.” Kathryn pushes her coffee away. “Raffi needs to know about the train tunnel and I need your help, okay?”

The man nods. “Yes, Kath. Whatever you want, I’ll do.”

***

Kathryn has never told anyone except Mark about the train tunnel.

But Raffi isn’t like anyone else. She’s intelligent, tenacious, thoughtful. 

If this is going to work, if this is going to go beyond sex into the meaningful relationship Kathryn has wanted for so long, then Kathryn has to explain.

Everything.


	6. The Train Tunnel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter associated with the trigger warning regarding a graphic reminisce of non-sexual child abuse due to homophobia.

“My name’s Mark, by the way,” the man says. He pats the dog. “And this is Mollie.”

Raffi’s fingers stay curled around her purse strap.

“I can’t do this here.” The flush of exercise and excitement is gone from Kathryn’s cheeks. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Raffi hooks her ankles around her chair’s front legs. She’s ready to swing her purse, to use it as a weapon as she yells for help. “Three people is not my scene.”

Mark’s eyes widen in horror. “Oh, no. Raffi, no.”

Kathryn shakes her head. “Raffi, Mark isn’t going to touch you. I promise. He isn’t going to do anything except help me tell you a story, all right?”

Raffi’s ankles loosen. She doesn’t trust Mark, but she believes Kathryn.

Mark stops at the counter to buy a Danish, then Raffi follows Mark and Kathryn to an apartment building next door to the coffee shop. In the elevator, wax paper crinkles as Mark bites into his pastry.

Kathryn gives him a sharp look. “The doctor said —”

“I know, I know.” Mark takes another bite.

For her entire adult life, Raffi has analyzed everything or blasted her brain with alcohol so she could stop thinking. As the elevator rises, Raffi pretends she’s drunk, that her ability to comprehend complex information is impaired.

Because she doesn’t know what the fuck is going on right now and if she stops and tries to figure it out, she might explode.

The elevator door opens and they walk down a hallway. Then the three of them are in a cozy apartment with houseplants on a window ledge, overflowing bookcases, and a doggie bed in a corner of the living room that is quickly filled by Mollie. Kathryn leaves her gym bag and tennis racket case near the door. Mark hangs the dog leash on a hook.

There are two club chairs that face a sofa and Raffi sits in a chair. Kathryn and Mark sit on the sofa and the two of them hold hands.

“So,” Raffi says, “the train tunnel?”

***

Even gripping Mark’s hand, Kathryn has the sensation of being underwater. Everything is slowed down, out of focus.

And she can’t breathe. 

But his squeeze of her hand is the same promise as ever and she looks into Raffi’s deep-feeling, deep-thinking brown eyes and, together, these two people give Kathryn the strength to begin her story….

It was 1959, and Kathryn was eleven years old. She had known for years that she liked to climb monkey bars or play tag with boys, but it was girls she was curious to touch, to kiss.

There was a girl in her class that Kathryn thought was beautiful. She wrote pages in her diary about this girl, about how smart the girl was and how pretty.

One day when Kathryn got home from school, her parents were sitting in the kitchen, the diary not under Kathryn’s pillow where she had left it, but open in front of them on the Formica table, Kathryn’s handwriting filling the pages.

Her mother didn’t offer an after-school snack. Instead, her chair scraped as she stood and looked out the window, her hands stuffed in her apron pockets.

Her father didn’t say why he wasn’t working out in the cornfields. Instead, he told Kathryn to change into her farm work clothes and get into his truck, that the two of them were going on an errand.

He didn’t speak during the twenty-minute drive to the Unionville Tunnel, the only tunnel in the Indiana Railroad system. The long, single-train track cut through hillside and every few hours a train would burst out, cow-catcher flared, at incredible speed.

He told Kathryn to walk into the tunnel.

She refused.

The front of her shirt crumpled in his fist as he dragged her, her knees slamming into wooden railroad ties, her cries echoing off the walls.

He pushed her down. The small rocks between the tracks dug into her back. Her elbows were trapped under his rough hands and his denim-clad shin pressed across her thighs. He screamed that maybe she needed a train to knock some sense into her, that he had half a mind to tie her to the tracks and leave her there until she figured out a woman was made for a man, not for another woman.

Her head throbbed where it had hit a railroad tie and she was crying so hard that she was having trouble getting air. Tears dripped into her ears and her father’s spittle dampened her face.

In the darkness of the tunnel, she might have heard a long, low train whistle.

She might not have. 

The tracks might have vibrated with the approach of an engine. 

They might not have.

Her father was still screaming and Kathryn had no idea what the train schedule was but she was certain he would get one or both of them killed.

She stopped crying.

She said she understood.

Her father’s hands fell away and she ran.

He didn’t say a word on the drive home and she went straight to the bathroom she shared with her sister. A bar of soap narrowed until it fell apart under her fingers as Kathryn scrubbed at blood that had soaked through the knees on both sides of her pants.

For the next seven years, until she went away to college, Kathryn stuffed herself into a lie. She gossiped about cute boys with her friends. She thumbtacked pictures of Hollywood actors to her bedroom walls.

There was only one person who knew the truth.

Mark.

Kathryn had noticed how his eyes followed the other boys at tennis lessons, but not the girls.

They hatched a plan.

In high school, Mark and Kathryn would hold hands between classes. He would take her out on dates. At parties, they would dance and kiss and ensure people saw them dart together into a make-out room.

Just before high school graduation, Kathryn’s father demanded to know Mark’s intentions toward his daughter.

So there was an engagement ring on her finger when Kathryn and Mark left for college. They chose Northwestern because the university was over the state line. It was 1966, and private behavior by consenting adults was legal in Illinois, but not in Indiana.

They both went a little crazy.

But even with very active sex lives — hers with women, his with men — Kathryn and Mark were serious about their studies. She wanted to make the world a better, safer place. He wanted to understand humanity, to think through moral questions and assumptions.

To plan for life after graduation, they read law books and asked professors discreet questions. They learned a person could — and, in many parts of the country, would — be fired just for being gay.

They could see only one path to someday-job security.

The summer before their senior year, Kathryn and Mark were married under a birch tree in her parents’ backyard.

At the reception, Kathryn’s father advised Mark to pull Kathryn out of school. After all, securing a husband was the only reason to send a woman to college.

Mark replied that Kathryn could make her own choices — a statement of truth and lie so intertwined that Mark penned a philosophy paper about it that he finished, reread, then burned in their fireplace.

In Indiana, even though she never legally changed her name, she’s Kathryn Johnson, and friends and family think she’s the devoted wife to her high school sweetheart. Mark and Kathryn go back for weddings, holidays, and funerals — including when Kathryn’s father’s truck skidded on the ice and hit a telephone pole, killing him instantly. Kathryn didn’t cry at the memorial. Her father had caused her enough tears already.

As she wraps up the story on the sofa of her Upper East Side apartment, Kathryn has watched Raffi pitch forward with hands clasped, clutch her stomach as if she would be sick, and press her fingertips to bitten-together lips.

“Um,” Raffi says, her shining eyes shifting to Mark. “You’re a great guy. An amazing person. But can I have a minute with Kathryn?”

There’s a squeeze of Kathryn’s hand, then Mollie trots after Mark until he closes his bedroom door behind them.

“Can I, uh …?” Raffi motions toward the seat Mark just left. 

Kathryn wants to say, “please” and “yes” and “I would like that.” But she’s talked out, so she nods.

The cushion dips as Raffi sits.

Raffi’s hands are between her knees and, for a second, Kathryn thinks this is going to be the end, that trusting someone other than Mark was a massive, terrible mistake. But then Raffi’s lower lip trembles and she says, “Is it okay if I hug you?” and Kathryn understands and she nods again and Raffi’s arms are warm and strong and, for the first time since childhood, Kathryn thinks she just might be home. 


	7. Love is Love, Baby Girl

Hearing about an upbringing so different from her own rattles Raffi. But she doesn’t want trauma kissing or make-it-better sex. She wants both herself and Kathryn to regain equilibrium before getting any deeper into anything.

So she holds Kathryn on the sofa for a long time, Raffi’s hands splayed on Kathryn’s back and Kathryn’s chin resting on Raffi’s shoulder. Then they plan to meet at Raffi’s apartment the next night and talk some more. Raffi doesn’t kiss Kathryn good night and Kathryn doesn’t try to kiss Raffi. 

The knock the following evening is so tentative, Raffi barely hears it before she runs to the door. 

“You’re scared.” Raffi takes one of Kathryn’s shaking hands. 

“A little.” Kathryn’s smile is strained. 

But Raffi bursts out laughing when she sees Kathryn brought a bottle of sparkling water instead of wine. 

They eat Greek delivery and Raffi tells Kathryn about a different kind of growing up.

About playing with a doll and telling her father that she wanted to marry someone as pretty as the doll — and her father saying, “Love is love, baby girl.”

About parents who greeted the many women and few men Raffi brought home with hugs and the instruction, “Eat whatever you want but add it to the grocery list on the fridge if you finish something.”

About a broken condom and a difficult decision and a man she fell out of love with who predicted, “You’re gonna go back to the ladies, Raffi, and you’ll find a good one.”

About a chubby baby who became a sensitive child who said, “Mama, I don’t like you when you drink your wine-juice,” and Raffi didn’t listen because the jangle in her brain was louder than the son whose mother had become a superstar at work but needed to drink herself into a stupor at home.

Kathryn asks questions — of course — and pale fingers twine with dark ones as they discuss their age and racial differences, as they compare farm chores with learning to roller skate on asphalt paths through New York’s Central Park, and as they reminisce about times at the UN when one of them would marvel at the other’s brains or beauty or both.

“So a city mouse and a country mouse find their way to each other.” Kathryn gathers empty takeout containers. “What happens next?”

Raffi nests the containers and tosses them in the trash. Her hips are loose as she steps back to the woman she now feels she knows and who knows her. “The mice are pretty good talkers. I’ll bet they’re good at other things, too.”

They move to the sofa.

It’s dark outside and light from a table lamp catches Kathryn’s cheekbones, her lips, her décolletage above the neckline of her dress. It’s curves and softness and a grin when she catches Raffi looking.

Raffi’s breasts tingle. Her knuckles graze Kathryn’s cheek and Kathryn inhales sharply, eyes drifting closed.

“Okay?” Raffi says.

“Please.”

Noses bump, lips nudge, breaths catch. It’s a sweet first kiss and they linger in it. Raffi knows this is because neither of them is very good at turning off her brain and they both are acutely aware that this is the only first kiss they’ll ever have and they want to enjoy it.

Raffi’s fingers slip through Kathryn’s hair.

Kathryn’s hand holds the back of Raffi’s neck, but Kathryn doesn’t try to rake her fingers through Raffi’s curls. If she had, the coil pattern would be disturbed, which would be time-consuming to fix, requiring water and styling products.

Raffi’s eyebrows shoot up. She breaks the kiss and rests their foreheads together.

“You’ve been with a Black woman with natural hair before.”

For a second, there’s a crooked grin. 

Then heads tilt and tongues slide. Raffi is getting lost, lost in a tongue that caresses hers, in fingertips that trace her cheeks and then move lower, in soft sounds of happiness and love.

Is this love?

This could be love.

There’s a tug on the back of Raffi’s bra and she understands this is a request. She nods in the kiss and reaches around to unhook the bra, but Kathryn pops it open, one-handed. 

Laughter bubbles out.

“What?” Kathryn is smiling. 

“Smooth move.” Cool air flows onto Raffi’s skin as she pulls off her blouse and tosses the bra on top of it on the floor. “Very smooth.”

The smile widens. “I try.”

Hands push Raffi until she’s lying on her back. Then a tongue swirls on one nipple and there are soft caresses on her other breast and Raffi cries out. Pleasure is electric across her chest and the fresh, delicate scent she associates with Kathryn must be shampoo because it’s everywhere as copper-colored tendrils trail on dark skin. Raffi wants to learn the curves of Kathryn’s breasts, the slope of her neck, the hollows of her collarbone. But the bliss of what’s happening to her own breasts has Raffi helpless and the warm legs on either side of her hips are strong and they shift as Kathryn grazes one nipple and then the other with her teeth, always with fingertips exploring the breast that is damp and wanting when her mouth is busy elsewhere. 

There are sounds, eager sounds, from both of them and hearing someone else’s pleasure to be touching her body winds Raffi up even more, back arching against the cushions, ache low in her belly, tightness between her legs.

Raffi finds Kathryn’s shoulders and pulls her up, the air chilly on Raffi’s damp, hardened nipples. 

“You are amazing,” Raffi murmurs. “Amazing.”

There’s a contented hum and Raffi fulfills her own fantasy, only better, her lips on Kathryn’s neck and her hands on Kathryn’s rear end as Kathryn gasps and sighs. 

And this is paradise, this soft skin with long muscles shifting underneath, this rhythm of hips moving together, this music of throaty contentment and breathy joy.

But paradise is fleeting. 

And Raffi is already trembling for more.

Kathryn is wearing a dress that zips up the back and Raffi knows that if she sees Kathryn in a bra and panties that Raffi will want to move things to the bedroom. Would that be too fast? Does Kathryn expect to fool around tonight but not have sex? 

And a sound of pure glee tumbles out of Raffi. 

Kathryn pulls away, face flushed, chest rising and falling, eyebrow raised. “What — what’s so funny?”

“You!” Raffi is laughing so hard that Kathryn grabs the back of the sofa to keep from falling. “You wore a dress because you knew the whole thing would have to come off, that it would be all or nothing.”

Lips close around Raffi’s earlobe. There’s a nibble, and a puffed cheek from a smile presses against Raffi’s neck. “You have absolutely no evidence to support that accusation.”

Raffi inhales the fresh, delicate scent, her mouth twitched in a grin as her fingers find the zipper. “I could try to find additional support for my conclusion.”

Kathryn is already shimmying up so the zipper will move down. 

When the dress has separated to the lower part of her back, Kathryn stands and the cloth falls to the floor. She bends to pick it up and Raffi sees slim thighs, a perfectly curved stomach, and swells under a bra and panties that Raffi wants to touch, now.

“Bedroom.” She pulls Kathryn’s hand and they hurry, Kathryn tossing the dress onto Raffi’s bureau as Raffi’s thumbs hook onto the sides of Kathryn’s panties and pull down.

Raffi’s tongue darts out to lick her lips. She loves a natural redhead. 

What’s left of their clothes lands on the floor. Kathryn’s wedding ring hits the wooden top of the bureau with a  _ plink _ .

“Lights on or off?”

“Off.”

Raffi is about to wonder why, to speculate about New York City windows and sexual histories and personal preferences, when she’s pushed to her back again, this time on the bed. 

And Raffi knows exactly what she wants. She shifts Kathryn up so Raffi can catch a nipple in her lips. Slivers of street lights flow between the blinds as Raffi licks and sucks. Her fingers pinch and roll the nipple on the other side and there are murmurs of pleasure as Raffi’s mouth takes its time learning one breast, then the other, then back again. Kathryn’s arms tremble and her thighs are tight around Raffi’s midsection and there is dampness on Raffi’s stomach.

The sounds from Kathryn become more desperate.

Raffi’s fingers shift downward.

The women roll until Kathryn is on her back with Raffi above her. Kathryn’s hands grip Raffi’s shoulders and push gently, a question, not a demand. 

Raffi kisses her way lower. The soft underside of breasts. The shallow skin-ridges of ribs that receive a few nuzzles — “No tickling!” “That means you’re ticklish.” “No trying to find out if I’m ticklish!” — and a small bend of stomach. There’s coarse hair and legs spread apart that are bent at the knee and Raffi’s next kiss discovers that Kathryn is practically dripping. 

The tightness between Raffi’s own legs is so intense it almost hurts. To be so wanted, for someone to be so eager for her, it has Raffi almost dizzy with excitement.

“Are you okay?” Kathryn shifts and she’s propped on her elbows.

With one hand, Raffi lightly pushes Kathryn back down. “Just happy.”

“Me, too.”

There are four pillows against the headboard and Kathryn grabs one and positions it under her rear end. 

Raffi kisses inward from open thighs to lick outer folds. Her tongue drifts around curves and slides along fluid-slick skin. She hears Kathryn’s murmurs of appreciation and licks inward, the slightly metallic taste a bonus to learning what Kathryn likes, what she wants.

A wiggle against her mouth gives Raffi answers.

Raffi’s tongue finds Kathryn’s pink bulb of nerves and Kathryn’s murmurs become faster. 

Raffi sucks carefully, gently. She closes her eyes and exists as sensation, as suction and tongue-flicks and soft skin under fingertips. The murmurs become louder and louder until they are cries of excitement, and Raffi feels like she could float, like the happiness in the room could inflate her like a helium balloon and she would hit the ceiling. 

She eases in a finger.

Muscles clench as Raffi shifts the finger in and out, curling and straightening, never pausing her gentle suction. She’s about to add a second finger when the clenching tightens and thighs clamp over Raffi’s ears. There’s a spurt of fluid and muffled screams of ecstasy and the bed shakes with the force of Kathryn’s orgasm.

Raffi gasps, trembling with her own satisfaction as she gulps air.

There’s a gratified last kiss — for now — on Kathryn’s folds and Raffi squeezes out from between thighs that are warm but not exactly comfortable. 

In streaks of light from between the blinds, Raffi sees Kathryn’s hands holding a pillow tightly over her own face.

“Hey,” Raffi crawls next to Kathryn, “what’s this?”

Kathryn is still quivering, still whimpering. 

“Bliss.”

“Then why are you hiding?”

“Don’t want to be too loud. Apartment building.”

Raffi isn’t sure she believes this is the only reason, but the pillow lifts and lips meet and the moment passes. Hands caress, legs slide.

A finger teases Raffi’s folds. 

“My turn?” Kathryn’s eagerness ratchets Raffi’s need to a heat that flows up into her stomach and down through her inner thighs.

Raffi shifts the lower pillow to her own rear end. Her legs fall open.

With agonizing slowness, Kathryn works her way down. She suckles Raffi’s nipples. She swirls her tongue in Raffi’s belly button. She keeps a finger circling, teasing Raffi’s folds but not venturing inward. There’s a nip of teeth on a hip and hesitation before lips lower to the very top of Raffi’s triangle of hair. 

Her c-section scar.

Kathryn is kissing her c-section scar.

No one has ever done that, not even Gabe’s father.

Raffi’s chest constricts. She wondered in the living room if this could be love. Now she’s sure it is.

“Must’ve hurt,” Kathryn murmurs. 

“After the pain medication wore off, it did. It doesn’t anymore.”

“Good.”

Then a finger slides in easily because Raffi is so wet and Raffi doesn’t want to orgasm yet because she wants Kathryn to keep doing what she’s doing and Raffi tries to hold it back, she tries so hard, but she’s clenching on the finger and then there are two fingers and the tip of a tongue just barely touching Raffi’s bulb of nerves and sounds that had been ripped from deep inside explode into cries of ecstasy and Raffi is undone, completely undone, and her back is arched and her toes are curled and she’s shaking and she’s _angry_ because she wanted more but her body went so fast.

She tries to catch her breath. 

“That was exquisite.” Kathryn’s whisper is almost reverent. “You’re exquisite.”

Her heart is pounding and she’s too weak to move well, but Raffi’s head lifts so she can see Kathryn. “What?”

“You’re so present, right here, right now.”

Kathryn shifts and she’s cross-legged between Raffi’s legs. Wide blue eyes and tilted, copper-colored eyebrows form the same admiring look Kathryn had when Cris and Emmet were kissing — and Raffi understands. 

“You muffle yourself because you think someone could hear you and figure out which apartment you’re in and that you’re with a woman?”

“Everyone has something.” Fluid-slick fingers stroke Raffi’s triangle of hair. 

Raffi stills the hand touching her. “Please don’t be evasive with me.”

The hand turns, holds Raffi’s. “Yes, and I’m working on being less paranoid. Old habits.”

“Okay.”

Raffi moves to sit up, but Kathryn pushes her back down. “You have one more in you, don’t you?”

Raffi’s cheeks warm. “How did you know?”

There’s a crooked grin and a scramble to lie down again and a quick tongue-swipe that sets Raffi’s legs trembling. There are licks and kisses, then Raffi arcs into the gentle suction she wanted so badly on her bulb of nerves and Raffi is on the upswing again and it’s slower this time, thank goodness, and the one finger that eases in is playful, curling and exploring, and it only takes a few minutes for Raffi to be whimpering, hips twitching, but it’s good, it’s better than good, and then there’s the second finger and the suction and it’s about to happen and there’s flicks of the tongue and fluid leaks and it’s happening, she’s orgasaming again and Raffi is laughing so hard that she’s crying because she’s a helium balloon and she’s floating up and away on currents of love. 

***

Kathryn brushes her teeth in Raffi’s bathroom. She had wondered, that morning, if she was too hopeful when she slipped her travel toothbrush and toothpaste into her purse.

The idea was to be able to erase oral sex breath.

Bringing a nightgown hadn’t occurred to her.

Kathryn hasn’t spent the night with a woman since graduate school. There was always the fear of being seen the next morning, of losing her job. 

But when Raffi held her and said, “We can call you a cab or a car service, but I would like it if you stayed over,” Kathryn agreed right away and she knew the smile on her face was as big as the one on Raffi’s.

Oh God, Raffi.

Kathryn had expected it to be good. She had anticipated curves and soft skin, skillful fingers and perfectly peaked breasts. But the laughing was a wonderful surprise and the teasing was fun and that c-section scar, that beautiful badge of self-sacrifice, definitely was a new experience. Supple lips and grasping hands and tongue-flicks between her legs — everything felt better than anything in a long, long time.

Maybe because there’s a chance this can last? Not just great sex, but an actual life together?

One of Raffi’s sleep t-shirts grazes Kathryn’s thighs as she spits in the sink and rinses her toothbrush. There’s a holder with places for two brushes and Kathryn plunks hers in the open side.

Two toothbrushes, one Kathryn’s and one Raffi’s, together in one holder. 

They look right.


	8. It’s All or Nothing

Their first morning together sets a pattern.

Kathryn wakes up first.

She pads to the kitchen in search of coffee.

Raffi wakes up to the aroma of brewing and stretches contentedly, pleased she doesn’t have to make the coffee herself. 

They drink coffee together in bed. 

There’s kissing, a little fooling around. 

Because Raffi lives farther from their jobs, Kathryn usually sleeps at Raffi’s apartment on Friday and Saturday nights. At first, when it’s time to leave, Kathryn will walk a few blocks to meet a cab or car service to take her to the Upper East Side. Eventually, she lets the car pick her up in front of Raffi’s building and Raffi considers this a victory.

Raffi stays over a few nights a week at Kathryn and Mark’s apartment. Early in this arrangement, Raffi is uneasy around Mark. He and Kathryn have a certain physical comfort around each other and Raffi’s stomach twists when she sees them hug or kiss on the cheek with matching gold bands gleaming on their left ring fingers. But Raffi gets used to it, and Mark becomes a decent semi-roommate, always willing to run down to the coffee shop to buy something.

One night in Kathryn’s bed, Raffi can’t sleep. Work has been busy and her mind jangles with Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Nigeria, with Chechnya. She hasn’t had a drink in so long but her brain can’t stop creating new puzzles for her to solve, can’t stop finding connections, can’t stop diving down rabbit holes. The pinball machine in her head clacks and dings and whoops. Kathryn has been asleep for hours, so Raffi cinches on one of Kathryn’s robes and heads for the living room in search of a book, a magazine, anything to distract her from the wine she craves to quiet her mind.

And Mark is there, lit by lamplight, Mollie next to him on the sofa as he pages through what looks like a textbook.

“Hey,” he murmurs, looking up. “Do you need anything?”

Raffi eases into a chair. Her head falls into her hands. “A drink.”

“‘As its power increases, the subjective fades into complete forgetfulness of self.’” Mark meets Raffi’s questioning glance. “That’s what Nietzsche said about ‘narcotic drink.’ Nothing wrong with a little, but a lot can be harmful.”

“I can’t do a little. It’s all or nothing.” Raffi rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands.

Mark nods. “I eat too many sweets. It’s completely different from alcoholism, I know, but I do have some idea what it’s like to be addicted to something even though you know it isn’t good for you.”

Mark isn’t overweight. 

And Raffi doesn’t fit the image in her mind of an alcoholic. She likes to believe she’s made her mistakes with alcohol and, though she gets tempted, she won’t drink ever again. 

“No wine for me and no pastries for you — deal?” Raffi sticks out her hand. 

Mark gets up, shakes Raffi’s hand. “Kath is going to love this.”

They sit in silence, Mark paging through his book, Raffi trying to absorb his calm to help her mind settle. Finally, Mark sets the book next to him on the sofa. 

“No good?”

There’s a crooked smile and it’s the same as Kathryn’s crooked smile when Raffi has analyzed her correctly. “How could you tell?”

“No bookmark, you just closed the book.”

The smile becomes rueful. “As you may know, Socrates wrote nothing. He explored philosophical questions in conversation. Lately, I’ve wondered if Socrates was on to something. I love philosophy, but these introductory textbooks make it seem thick and unknowable when the whole point is to have a nimble mind and explore possibilities.”

Mark is a professor of philosophy at New York University. Raffi knows he is supposed to teach a freshman class in the spring after years of teaching seniors. 

She gives him a look.

“So write your own book. Write a book so good that all the little freshmen who want to talk about philosophy will think they’ve got a friend like you to help them figure stuff out.”

He sits back, but he seems more pleased than pondering and Raffi realizes this is the first time she’s called Mark a friend.

She stands. “Well, good night.”

“Good night, Raffi. Sleep well.”

Days and nights roll by.

When Raffi and Kathryn go out to eat, Kathryn is formal, a bit aloof, glancing toward the restaurant door every time it opens. When they get ready to go to a gay club, The Monster or another one, Kathryn grabs her darker lipstick and her Indiana driver’s license.

One time, Raffi sits on the closed toilet seat as Kathryn watches her own reflection to apply the lip color.

“This isn’t a Clark Kent and Superman thing.” Raffi’s tone is more harsh than she intends. “A different lipstick and a fake ID aren’t disguises that will prevent certain people from recognizing you.”

Kathryn’s back stiffens. “Give me this, okay? It helps me feel better and I’m trying, really trying, but change doesn’t happen overnight.”

Raffi apologizes.

They talk, they read each other’s favorite books, and on lazy mornings they trade newspaper sections until long after their coffees have gone cold.

When they make love, it’s back-arching, it’s toe-curling, and they learn to anticipate each other, to revel in the familiar while delighting in the occasional or the new. 

Cris and Emmet break up, and they invite Cris over to Mark and Kathryn’s apartment for brunch. Raffi steers the conversation so Mark and Cris have a deep discussion about existentialist philosophy. Raffi and Kathryn exchange glances, hold breaths, cross fingers … but there’s no spark. Cris and Mark like each other as friends.

“You should join my soccer league,” Cris says to Mark as Cris zips up his jacket to leave. “It’s a great group of guys.”

The soccer league is a gay meat market and all four people in the room understand that from Cris’ description.

Mark’s head swivels to Kathryn, his eyebrows raised. Her chin juts to the calendar on the wall, then lowers in a subtle nod. 

“That would be great,” Mark tells Cris. “Once my tenure comes through in a few months, I’ll be there.”

With the job protection of academic tenure, Mark could be fired only due to extraordinary circumstances such as stealing university funds or the entire philosophy department shutting down.

Cris has heard enough from Raffi about Kathryn’s fears that Cris doesn’t have to ask. The Toonen decision led to workplace protections for sexual orientation in Australia, but, in the US, the ruling applies only to UN employees.

So Cris clasps Mark on the shoulder and says, “Can’t wait. Remember to call it _fútbol_ if you don’t want to feel like a _tarado_.”

After the door closes behind Cris, Mark asks Raffi what _tarado_ means.

“Dumbass,” she says, and Mark frowns. “But don’t worry about it. Cris is king of the soccer league. He’ll make sure you’re all right.”

When Kathryn travels, Raffi sleeps at her own apartment. 

It takes weeks of work, but Raffi completes a plan for Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations to collaborate on humanitarian aid in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. When the proposal reaches Kathryn’s desk, she quietly routes it to a UN subcommittee that neither Kathryn nor Raffi can influence. The women celebrate in private when both organizations approve Raffi’s plan.

Raffi brings Kathryn to Thanksgiving. Raffi’s family greets the newcomer to their table with hugs, and everything about this first meeting seems fine— except Kathryn’s fingers keep dipping into her pants pocket. Raffi finally takes Kathryn aside, puts an arm around her shoulders, and tells her to just wear the wedding ring. When Kathryn does, things shift from fine to great with wit and conversation and Raffi’s family ignoring the gold band they had been warned might make an appearance.

That night in bed, Kathryn’s thumb traces the arc of Raffi’s eyebrow. 

“Thank you,” Kathryn says. “I appreciate your patience with me.”

And before Raffi can say anything, lips meet and pale fingers push Raffi’s pyjama bottoms down and it’s so good that Raffi can barely breathe.

Mark and Kathryn fly to Indiana for Christmas. Kathryn calls Raffi from a frost-covered pay phone outside of a gas station and says, “I miss hearing about your day. I miss talking about the news. I miss your analytical mind and your breaths next to me at night. I love you so much.” 

And Raffi says, “I love you, too,” and even though they’ve been saying the words to each other for a few months now, Raffi feels them so acutely that there’s an ache in her chest.

For New Year’s Eve, Raffi and Kathryn go to Cris’ apartment and celebrate with Cris and his new boyfriend, Ian. They can’t get a cab back uptown so they take the bus and it’s a party inside with music and dancing in the aisles — and Raffi and Kathryn laugh so hard their cheeks hurt.

It’s a bitterly cold February morning, though, when Raffi goes to court to petition for partial custody to be restored. She and Gabe’s father both suggest easing back into visits, but the judge says the wishes of the child must be considered. Raffi is shown a piece of notebook paper with Gabe’s careful cursive explaining that he doesn’t want the court to make him see his mother even if she says she’s sober and he does a lot of things he doesn’t want to do like go to school and do homework and he is fifteen years old, not a baby, and he never wants to talk to his mother again and he shouldn’t be forced to see someone he doesn’t want to see. 

Raffi cries in the ladies room of the New York County Family Court. 

Gabe’s father finds her. He tells the two other women in the bathroom to mind their own business and he holds Raffi, patting her back and swaying with her, and he says, “He’ll come around. I tell him every day that he’s blessed to have the mama he does and, one day, he’ll believe me. You hang on until that happens, okay?”

And Raffi cries harder. 

She walks from the courthouse toward work, hunched against freezing wind that burns her cheeks and eyes. Work will help. Kathryn is traveling and Cris is at his job and Raffi’s family is going to be disappointed. She may as well throw herself into puzzles of information, into the analysis that can be so encompassing that everything else fades away. 

But Julian takes one look at her and says, “You know, it’s a beautiful day and I can’t be cooped up for a moment longer. Let’s step out.”

Through his window is dirty slush and grey sky. 

Julian brings her to a homey coffeehouse with big band music playing through the speakers. He hands her an oversized cup of cappuccino and the hot, sweet liquid warms Raffi’s belly and she thanks him. 

Months tumble by and Mark gets his tenure. He joins the soccer league and soon he’s gone from the apartment a few nights a week. He dates an actor starring as Jean Valjean in _Les Misérables_ on Broadway. The guy goes by one name, like Cher or Madonna, and Mark says they talk about spirituality and the intrinsic nature of human interactions. Then Mark dates a martial arts master who’s into meditation and candles, then a chef who fancies himself an ambassador to cuisines around the world, then an airplane pilot who loves old movies — and when Raffi asks what the two of them talk about, Mark blushes and says, “Not much.” 

And Kathryn’s smile is huge and Mark’s is, too, and Raffi grins because she likes Mark, she does, and she’s glad that he’s happy.

It’s a stiflingly hot morning in July, almost a year since Raffi started at Doctors Without Borders, when she pushes through the office doors and the secretary isn’t at the front desk.

No one is in their offices. 

Raffi follows the sounds of a television and she sticks her head into the conference room. CNN is on and Raffi’s co-workers are crying because there have been explosions within the United Nations security zone in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian Muslims are being slaughtered and Doctors Without Borders personnel are in danger. United Nations peacekeepers aren’t able to stop the bloodshed, the terror, the genocide.

Raffi’s lungs aren’t working properly.

She leans against the doorframe. 

This is her fault. Her plan for Srebrenica didn’t anticipate the security zone being breached. She didn’t account for people so determined to kill others that they would violate international codes of decency.

Again.

Yes, it’s Rwanda all over again and this time there’s no blaming JL.

Raffi runs to the elevator. She practically dives down the subway steps. Kathryn is traveling but it doesn’t matter because Raffi doesn’t want Kathryn. She doesn’t want Cris or her parents or her sister or even Gabe. 

Raffi takes the train to her stop in Astoria.

She ducks into the wine shop a few blocks from her apartment. 

She buys six bottles of red wine, walks with the bag held tightly to her chest, and locks her apartment door behind her.

***

The closed session meeting at the UN office in Vienna, Austria, is interrupted by banging on the door and a piece of paper pushed under the gap. 

Voices that had been raised in debate fall silent. 

A guard picks up the paper and conveys it to the Security Council chairman, whose eyes flash across typewritten words, whose neck shifts with swallows of air, and whose mouth forms the word, “Srebrenica.”

There are shouts and pointed fingers. Subcommittee divisions dissolve as staffers demand additional information. The door is thrown open and specialists convey telexes from inside the former security zone that describe shelling, gunfire, displaced people, and brutal killings quickly spiraling into the genocide of Bosnian Muslims.

Kathryn’s chest is heavy. She envisions the horrors … and remembers Raffi’s hips wriggling in excitement as she exclaimed that the UN approved her plan to partner with Doctors Without Borders in Srebrenica. 

There is a legal pad in front of Kathryn. She flips to a fresh page and clicks her ballpoint pen.

The page soon contains options, responsibilities, and concerns separated by subcommittee. UN staffers are arguing, but Kathryn stands and speaks over all of them to propose they focus on one goal — to save as many Bosnian Muslims as possible while protecting UN soldiers and partners. She rips her paper into subcommittee-divided lists and distributes the pieces.

Staffers get to work.

Kathryn checks her watch. It’s almost 9 a.m. in New York, six hours behind Vienna.

Raffi should be pushing through the doors of the Doctors Without Borders office. 

Maybe Raffi will understand that no one would expect a partnership plan to predict something like this. Maybe Raffi will be part of a team offering input on corrective strategy. Maybe — 

Kathryn removes her watch and puts it in her purse. 

She leads her subcommittee and confers with the chairman on projects suitable for other councils within the UN. Some staffers push for immediate punishment for perpetrators of genocide, but UN soldiers are peacekeepers, not warriors, and the UN relies on its court of law to deliver justice. 

Subcommittees update each other and staffers in charge of coordinating UN partners relay information from international headquarters offices. For Doctors Without Borders, that’s Geneva, not New York.

Kathryn shifts in her seat and waits for the next subcommittee to share information. 

Food is brought to the meeting room and it’s nearly sunrise when word arrives that UN soldiers inside the former security zone have begun evacuation of civilians and partners. 

Staffers stand, stretch, rub their eyes. Cars arrive to take them home or to hotels.

Kathryn digs in her purse and checks her watch.

It’s been fourteen hours.

At 11 p.m., New York time, Raffi should be asleep.

Kathryn calls anyway, her hotel room’s phone receiver tight on her ear.

“C’mon, c’mon,” she mutters.

No answer.

A chill seeps into Kathryn’s bones. 

The UN decides to keep to its schedule, even if meeting agendas have changed. 

That means three more days in Vienna, packed with events. When she’s in her hotel room in the mornings and evenings, Kathryn calls Raffi at home and at work. She calls Raffi’s parents who say not to worry, that Raffi doesn’t answer the phone when she’s upset. She calls Cris who says Raffi can isolate herself in tough times, but she’s always all right. 

Kathryn calls Mark. 

“Please,” her knuckles are white as she holds the phone receiver, “please go to Astoria.”

That evening, her last in Vienna before flying home early the next morning, Kathryn has a message from Mark at the hotel front desk: “Knocked and knocked, but no answer and no sounds inside. Building super refused to unlock apartment door. Will query our mutual friend at tennis.”

She crumples the message slip. When her hotel room phone rings in the middle of the night, she’s on her third cup of coffee when she picks up and Mark says, “Julian said she hasn’t been to work.”

The chill in Kathryn’s bones sharpens into biting cold.

On the flight home, she leans forward, willing the airplane to go faster. She’s part of a contingent of staffers and dignitaries, which means they all have to check in at UN headquarters in New York. UN vehicles avoid tunnels because of the security risk, so the black SUV speeds from the airport to the Queensboro Bridge and into Manhattan, away from Astoria. Kathryn’s hands are tightly clasped in her lap. It takes all her self-control not to climb over the men in suits rumpled from the long flight, yank open the car door, and sprint to Raffi’s apartment. 

Check-in at the UN becomes a two-hour meeting during which Kathryn bites the inside of her cheek so hard she draws blood.

Then she leaves her travel bag in her office, grabs her purse, and hurries outside to hail a cab. It’s evening rush hour but she gets one quickly, rattles off Raffi’s address, and adds, “Take the bridge, not the tunnel.”

The driver says he can’t. He points to his radio and it’s tuned to the traffic station. The announcer is saying a jumper has positioned himself on a landing of the Queensboro Bridge and police are trying to talk the man down but traffic is closed in both directions.

The radio becomes static.

The red numbers on the meter blur.

A pigeon pauses in the sky, wings open.

Kathryn blinks. 

The radio announcer is still yammering, the numbers on the meter are crisp, and the pigeon flaps its wings until Kathryn can no longer see it through the windshield.

She will not let this stop her.

Yes, there are other bridges. But the cab would have to inch through the snarl of traffic to get to the one farther north and the one farther south would at least double the time it takes to get to Astoria.

And she’s got to get to Astoria.

“Take the tunnel,” Kathryn says. 

She tells herself that she was allowed one moment of panic and she just had it. No more. She’ll be fine.

The cab sits in the line of cars, the maw of the Midtown Tunnel ahead of them.

She’ll be fine.

Each tunnel tube is built for two lanes of vehicle traffic, nothing like a single-train railroad tunnel.

She’ll be fine.

Lights inside illuminate tiled walls and asphalt, nothing like the darkness and tracks in Indiana.

She’ll be fine.

The echoing sounds are tire squeals and car horns, nothing like the screams of a father and the cries of a little girl. 

She’ll be fine.

_ Daddy! Daddy, no! _

She’s not fine.


	9. We’ll Get Through This

There are hands on her shoulders, shaking her.

Someone is yelling.

“Wake up. Wake up! _Wake the fuck up!_ ”

“Hey, now,” says someone else. “That’s not very nice.”

“Nice? Are you _fucking kidding me_? This could be alcohol poisoning. She could be —” the voice cracks. “She could be dead.”

Raffi thinks she smiles.

This is silly. 

Alcohol poisoning happens to college kids who chug from kegs. 

Raffi likes wine. 

She’s just had a lot.

Why was she drinking?

Oh God, Srebrenica. 

And Rwanda. 

And patterns and contexts and suffering faces and words and numbers and slaughtered people and gunfire — all pinballs in her mind and she needs another drink to make it stop.

Raffi’s eyes open. There’s a blur of copper-colored hair. Behind that are exposed forearms and the spikes of keys on a massive key ring.

Why is the building super, Miles O’Brien, in her apartment?

Why is Kathryn here? Isn’t she supposed to be in Vienna?

And why won’t Raffi’s arms or legs work so she can move off the sofa?

Keys jangle as a halo of blond hair drops into view.

“She isn’t dead, but you’re right, Kathryn — there’s definitely something wrong with your girlfriend.”

“I’m calling 911.”

The next thing Raffi sees is a nurse folding a blood pressure cuff. Raffi is propped on a hospital bed and the sound of the cuff’s Velcro ripping apart rattled Raffi’s ears.

“Hi,” the nurse says softly. “How are you doing?”

Raffi’s eyes are sandpaper.

Her throat is steel wool. 

Her lips are dust.

The nurse eases a straw into Raffi’s mouth. The water burns at first, but then it helps.

“Thanks.”

“I’m Alyssa Ogawa.” The nurse’s hand is cool on Raffi’s forearm. “You had alcohol poisoning, but you’re better now. Your dad double-checks your chart, your sister double-checks him, and they both call your mother to update her. You are one very loved young woman.”

Raffi remembers holding bags of clinking bottles to her chest as she walked, over and over again, from the wine shop to her apartment.

Nurse Ogawa’s hand moves to Raffi’s shoulder, thin material of the hospital gown between them. “If you don’t need anything from me, then I’m going to leave your room so you can feel better, okay?”

Raffi doesn’t understand, but she nods.

Nurse Ogawa flicks a switch. The only illumination becomes city lights through the window to the outside and a fluorescent rectangle that spills through a clear panel in a door that clicks shut behind the nurse.

There is a needle inserted in the crook of Raffi’s elbow. It’s held in place by tape and attached to a clear tube leading to a bag on a metal pole. There is a tray table on wheels near her bed and a small couch against a wall and, on the couch, a blanket moves.

Raffi’s head tilts. She squints.

The blanket stands and shuffles over.

“Hi.” It’s Kathryn, wrapped in the blanket, whispering. “If you can scoot over, I’ll sit with you.”

Raffi bites the side of her tongue.

It hurts.

She scoots.

“I’m sorry,” she says as the bed creaks with the weight of two people. “Do you hate me?”

“No. I love you.” Kathryn pulls the blanket over both of their legs. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner.”

And Raffi gains a fractured memory of her shoulders shaking and Kathryn yelling and Miles standing there with his massive ring of keys.

“Did you save my life?”

“I don’t think so.” Kathryn’s feet wiggle until the blanket shifts to cover her toes. “You probably would have slept it off. The doctor didn’t even need to pump your stomach, just give you IV fluids and wait.”

From the other side of the door are squeaks of sneakers and the chatter of nurses.

Raffi thought she would feel something to know she fucked up Srebrenica, she fucked up her sobriety, she probably fucked up her career — and Kathryn still didn’t dump her. 

Relief?

Exhilaration?

Lasciviousness, even?

But Raffi just wants to melt away and not exist anymore because then she can’t write plans that get people killed and she won’t have a pinball machine in her mind that needs to be drowned with wine and she won’t hurt people she loves.

Kathryn’s hand finds Raffi’s and squeezes.

“We’ll get through this. The UN evacuated as many people as possible in Srebrenica. What happened isn’t your fault.”

Raffi is quiet. She doesn’t want to argue.

A janitor must walk past because a jangle of keys brings back another fragment of memory.

“Oh,” Raffi says, and Kathryn says, “Hmm?” and Raffi says, “Did you tell Miles that you’re my girlfriend?”

There’s another squeeze on Raffi’s hand. “Yes. He was the second person I told. I needed to get into your apartment and he said friends don’t get an all-access-pass into private property. I yelled at him that I’m not a friend, I’m your girlfriend, and he could check if he wanted to, and he would see that I have a toothbrush in your toothbrush holder and a nightgown in your drawer and clothes in your closet.”

Raffi wants to understand. But that was a lot of back and forth and then there’s a tug on Raffi’s chin and it’s Kathryn and their lips meet. 

Raffi pulls away. 

The mention of a toothbrush made her teeth feel woolly and she doesn’t know when she last brushed and she doesn’t deserve a kiss.

“You’re a mess,” Kathryn says gently, kindly. “You didn’t ask who was the first person I told.”

“Told what?”

Kathryn’s head shakes. “Go back to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

And as heavy as Raffi’s limbs feel and as thick as her mind is, she wants to know. “Told what?”

“The first person I told that you’re my girlfriend was a cab driver who had to watch me have an emotional breakdown somewhere under the East River. The third person I told was a 911 operator. The fourth person I told was a paramedic. Your dad told the nurse in the emergency room. He also told the charge nurse on this floor when he instructed her to break the rules to allow an overnight visitor — and she said no, then added that she wasn’t responsible if her floor nurses developed temporary blindness, but not deafness, so a visitor had better be quiet and practically invisible.”

Raffi’s forehead furrows. The stream of information rushed by so quickly. She grasps that Kathryn didn’t step out of the gay closet, she exploded out, but there was a thread of something else. 

“You … were … _under_ the East River? You took the tunnel?”

There’s another squeeze on Raffi’s hand. “I did. It was awful and I never want to do it again, but I would for you.”

The hazy, numbness in Raffi’s mind cracks. Tears leak. She isn’t crying, exactly, but something aches deep inside and it’s seeping out.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Kathryn.”

“I know.”

Raffi’s eyes burn and she closes them. The next thing she sees is daylight streaming in, the blanket folded on the couch, and a different nurse ripping off a blood pressure cuff. 

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” says the nurse, a blonde with a pixie haircut. “Mandatory vitals check. You’re looking good for discharge tonight.”

Raffi nods.

Her parents and sister come by. They tell her how much they love her, how important she is to them.

Raffi nods. 

That evening, Kathryn brings clothes. Raffi wears the sweatpants and t-shirt she keeps at Kathryn’s apartment and they take a cab to the Upper East Side. Raffi climbs into Kathryn’s bed. After a few minutes, a familiar head peeks through the bedroom doorway.

“Hey,” Mark says softly. “Can I visit with you?”

Raffi nods. 

Mark sits cross-legged on the floor in front of her. 

“We’re pretty different, you know.”

This is obvious information so Raffi doesn’t say anything. 

“I used to eat sweets as a reward. If I did a good job that day, I could have a Danish or a donut. I think that you would drink as a punishment, to hurt your brain for thinking what you didn’t want it to think.”

Raffi’s eyebrows inch upwards. 

“I kept to our deal, you know. I haven’t had sweets since we talked that night in the living room. It’s been rough, but maybe I don’t need a reward just for living my life and you don’t need to punish yourself.”

A lick of anger twists Raffi’s belly. 

“You don’t get it, do you? A few undergrads learn their lessons and you want a cookie. My mistakes kill people. Your brain wanders down paths of philosophical thought. Mine pinballs around possibilities and ramifications and contingencies until lights flash and the machine dings and I can’t take it anymore.”

Mark doesn’t seem ruffled. “What if you learned a way to slow the pinball machine, to quiet the dings and dim the lights — without alcohol?”

If he suggests some sort of counseling, Raffi promises herself that she will scream. She doesn’t want a twelve-step program or group meetings or rehab. She’ll start analyzing the program itself, the other people in the group, the rehabilitation techniques. 

She just wants quiet.

And quiet is exactly what Mark recommends. 

So she agrees to try. 

The next morning, Mark brings Raffi to meet his martial arts instructor friend. The apartment is stiflingly hot and reeks of incense. Raffi doubts this is going to work. But the man brings over a meditation candle and he tells her to focus her mind on the flame. He talks her through techniques to calm her thoughts.

She’s not very good at it.

But she sees how she could be.

Raffi signs up for a month of meditation lessons.

She spends the rest of the day practicing, letting the pinballs ricochet around her brain, then trying meditative breathing exercises to slow them down.

The first time it works — not pinballs stopped, but slowed in a way that she controlled all by herself — Raffi’s laugh is a sound of pure joy.

That night in bed, Raffi rolls toward Kathryn.

“You sent Mark to talk to me, didn’t you?”

There’s a half-grin as Kathryn looks up from her book. “The right person for the right job.”

“Thanks.” The word “job,” brings up something Raffi wants to discuss. “I don’t know if I still have a job at Doctors Without Borders, but, if I do, I don’t know if I should keep it. Maybe I’m better off finding something with less pressure.”

The book slides onto the nightstand, a worn bookmark sticking out. Kathryn rolls to face Raffi. “I love you no matter what. But I think helping people is important to you and whether that’s micro-impact or globally relevant is your choice. Be a dog-walker. Be a tutor. Be a humanitarian affairs advisor. Just consider what you want before making any big changes.”

Raffi decides to call Julian in the morning, apologize, and ask for another few days off — if she still has a job — to think through her options.

But right now, tonight, she wants to appreciate this woman who has stayed by her side, who Raffi still thinks she doesn’t deserve, but wants to.

“Hey.” Raffi’s fingertips graze Kathryn’s cheek.

There’s a sharp intake of breath, the question of whether Raffi feels well enough, and the assurance that she does.

A nightgown lands on one side of the bed, a sleep shirt and shorts on the other. The reading lamp goes dark.

A hand grasps the back of Raffi’s neck. Lips meet and Kathryn’s kiss starts out tender but quickly becomes something else.

Neck-clinching, tongue-sucking, jagged-breathed desperation.

And it hurts.

Raffi’s heart hammers and her head snaps back. She pushes Kathryn away.

“I’m sorry.” Kathryn’s chest shudders. “I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck was that?” Raffi wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

Sheets gather in Kathryn’s clenched fists. “I thought I was going to lose you, okay? I was scared in Vienna and I was scared the whole flight home and I was scared at the UN and then I had to go through the _motherfucking tunnel_ and then I lost my shit at your building super. You looked dead and there were wine bottles on the floor just like the first time I went to your apartment and I should have known, I should have fucking _known_ that this could happen, but I thought you had it under control and I was wrong and I’m sorry about Rwanda and I’m sorry about Srebrenica and I’m sorry I had to do my job even though you needed me.”

A weight slams into Raffi's chest. 

“You have to break up with me.” The weight is crushing, but Raffi speaks through it. “This is what I do. I fuck stuff up and I drink too much and the people I love get hurt.”

“What?” Kathryn blinks. “No, _I’m_ the fuck-up. I’m afraid of tunnels and I have trouble opening up to people and I never talked to you about the drinking thing when I should have. I put my job before anything else and I’m in a bizarre marriage and I can’t even climax without hiding. You’re thoughtful and open and patient with me.”

The weight on Raffi’s chest dissolves. 

And Raffi remembers that night long ago when she didn’t want trauma kissing or make-it-better sex.

That was the right decision then. 

It isn’t now.

Her forehead finds Kathryn’s and Raffi says, “You’re good for me. I’m good for you. We’re good. We’re so good.”

Heads tilt. 

Tongues slide. 

Fingertips caress. 

There are soft sounds of happiness. 

Kathryn goes languid, her kisses and touches gentle.

Raffi is a little sleepy, not as energetic as she thought she would be, but the need is still there, the love she wants to manifest in physical form.

“Please ...” Raffi grasps Kathryn’s thigh, “I want you to ...”

The women roll and Raffi is on her back. 

A pale thigh slides between dark thighs.

A dark thigh slides between pale thighs. 

And this is exactly what Raffi wanted — bulbs of nerves rubbing on thighs, Kathryn’s body pressed on top of Raffi’s, copper-colored hair falling forward so the fresh, delicate scent is everywhere.

Raffi’s fingertips trace familiar curves. A shoulder blade. The bumps of ribs. The contour of a rear end. All working, all in harmony to grind on a thigh that’s gone damp with fluid, to give and receive the love that has Raffi’s breath catching, that has her so full and tingling between her legs that it’s starting already — that feeling of being filled like a helium balloon.

There’s warm breath in her ear and slurred words, “I loooovvvvveeee yoooouuuu.”

And Raffi hears the fatigue, the exhaustion of the last few days, and she realizes they need to go faster. 

Raffi rolls them onto their sides. 

Pale legs part for dark fingers. 

Dark legs part for pale fingers. 

And Raffi is already so wet that the two fingers that enter her are like a jolt of electric pleasure. She gasps for air, even as her own fluid-slick fingers slide in and out, even as eager sounds, the ones she knows so well, become louder and closer together — and even as Raffi’s other hand pushes low on Kathryn’s triangle of hair, compressing the bulb of nerves against fingers, and as she pushes, Raffi finds her voice to say, “I love you so, so much.”

And Kathryn orgasms without a pillow over her face or her forearm between her teeth or her hand clamped over her mouth. It’s loud and it’s quaking and it’s beautiful with wide eyes and wild hair and a mouth that forms an “o.”

Raffi inhales sharply. She pinches her own nipple, hard, and the electricity between her legs explodes into warmth and fluid and a helium balloon that hits the ceiling with a cry and a shout.

Bodies quiver.

Then arms slide, a pale chin hooks over a dark shoulder, and a long, low chuckle escapes from Raffi as she revels in togetherness, in euphoria, in something she wasn’t sure would ever happen.

“You did it,” she says. “You climaxed without hiding.”

Kathryn nods against Raffi’s cheek. “Nothing like listing my own faults to get me motivated to cross something off the list.”

“Good to know,” Raffi murmurs. “So next you wear normal lipstick to The Monster? Cut up your fake ID? Stop worrying that even one person at work will find out and block you from doing your job?”

There’s a sated grin, a mumble of, “Don’t push your luck,” and kisses and whispers of love.

***

It’s 3:47 a.m. when Kathryn jerks awake. 

Raffi is breathing deeply, steadily. She’s all right.

Images tumble through Kathryn’s brain. 

Paramedics loading Raffi onto a stretcher.

Emergency room nurses trying to find a pulse.

Raffi’s father bursting into the hospital triage area like a hero in a Western striding through double doors of a saloon to save the day.

Oh, and a cab driver’s worried eyes reflected in the rearview mirror as he said, “You need a paper bag or something, lady?” because Kathryn was doubled over, hands on her knees, and she was breathing so fast that the tiled walls of the Midtown Tunnel were trading places with black spots as her ears rang with her long-dead father’s screams.

But all of that is in the past.

There were times in her life when Kathryn would have given anything to erase old wounds. 

She doesn’t feel that way anymore.

Yet, there are things she wants to cross off her list of faults and things she doesn’t.

Kathryn pulls on a robe. 

He’s not reading in the living room, which means his insomnia wasn’t bad tonight and he may actually be asleep. 

Her tap on his door is barely audible. 

There’s a soft groan of acceptance.

She pushes open the door. Mollie is stretched across the foot of the bed, of course, and Mark sleeps on his stomach, feet tucked under Mollie, blanket pulled to his shoulders.

Kathryn climbs into bed next to him. She holds the blanket under her chin and looks at the ceiling.

“You were right,” she says. “Raffi just needed a little time. She’s going to be okay.”

There’s a wisp of a moan, then, “Let her do this her own way.”

It’s Kathryn who usually does things her own way. She was the one who wanted New York. Mark would have been happy in Chicago or San Francisco — any big, gay-friendly city. But he agreed to New York all those years ago and Manhattan is home for both of them now. 

But she wants him to have more than a city to call home.

“Are you still seeing that guy? The clarinet player with the Philharmonic?”

Mark’s head shakes into his pillow.

“I want you to have a relationship.” She finds his hand, gives it a squeeze. “Someone consistent, someone you can see yourself growing old with.”

“I get to do things my own way, too.” His lips arc in a gentle smile. “And I’m having a good time.”

She grins. “Good.”

She stares at the ceiling again. 

He’s quiet. 

Red numbers change on his clock radio.

Again.

And again.

There’s a squeeze on her hand. 

“You’re thinking so hard.” His eyes don’t open.

She squeezes back. Lets the truth spill out. “When I took my ring off waiting for the paramedics, I thought I would feel naked. The knight without her armor, you know? Or I thought maybe I would feel emboldened, ready to show my true self to the world.”

She blinks at the ceiling and continues.

“But it was just like at Thanksgiving. I missed you, the strength you give me. Raffi accepts all this, but for how long? If you find someone consistent — and I want you to find someone consistent — how will he react? I love Raffi, but I don’t want to be without you.”

Mark’s eyes open. Kathryn knows this without looking, and she turns to meet his sleep-bleary gaze.

“We give each other strength, Kath. That’s never going to change. Okay?”

She wants to know why he’s so sure and how they can keep a love that is in no way romantic, yet has been a rock-solid source of trust and companionship for more than three-quarters of their lives.

But he has a way of saying things that she knows to be true and the details fade away.

“Okay,” she says and, for now, in this place between night and day, it is.


	10. Because I Want To

Raffi calls Cris first. She can talk to him about anything, so it’s good to get it all out with someone she knows. He says, “Oh, man. I should have been a better friend to you, Raffi. I’m sorry,” and she means it when she replies, “It’s all right. I’m working on being better, too, and I’m focusing on that right now.”

Then she forces her finger, phone button by phone button, to call Julian.

She starts her story, but he interrupts, says he doesn’t want to talk on the phone, that he would like to meet at the coffeehouse they went to the one time and would that be all right. 

Raffi says yes.

She accepts a subway token from Mark and takes the train to Astoria, her shoulder itchy without a purse. Miles says he’s relieved she’s feeling better, unlocks her door, and tells her to count her blessings of good health and a feisty partner. 

Then he’s gone and she flinches at empty wine bottles on the floor.

So many bottles.

She refuses to count, just grabs a garbage bag. Glass clinks and settles and Raffi is glad she declined Kathryn’s offer to help. This is ugly work and Raffi wants to be ugly alone.

A full bag goes down the garbage chute.

Then another.

She watches the bags slide down and imagines pinballs in her mind going with them, sliding away until her thoughts are manageable.

The floor is clean.

Raffi needs to get changed if she’s going to meet Julian on time, but she opens the door she usually keeps closed. Her hand is tight on the doorknob as she looks to Gabe’s bed, his Mets pennant, his desk with pencils in a neat row, all sharpened to the same perfect point.

“You’re a smart kid,” she murmurs. “Smarter than your mom. I’m trying, though, baby, and maybe one day I’ll be good enough for you again.”

She wipes the dampness under her eyes with her fingertips.

Gets ready for her meeting.

Makes it to the coffeehouse with five minutes to spare.

Julian is already there.

“Raffi!” His hug is fierce, almost too hard, and a laugh escapes at the sheer ludicrousness of her boss nearly knocking the wind out of her as he greets her with glee instead of disdain.

And Julian hugs Raffi even more tightly, then lets her go in a rush of air.

“Am I not fired?” Raffi takes in Julian’s massive grin.

“Of course not.” Julian’s hand waves. “We’re just glad you’re all right. I brought a card.”

He gives her an envelope and the greeting card inside is signed by nearly everyone at the office.

“Thanks.” 

They sit and he already has a cappuccino for her, a saucer on top to keep in the heat.

Julian’s face becomes more serious than Raffi has ever seen.

“As you know, Raffi, physicians lose patients. I’d like to tell you about a patient of mine. Her name was Ekoria.”

Raffi leans forward, her hands cupping her warm mug.

Julian tells her how Ekoria was pregnant and desperately sick with AIDS. There was a newly approved drug called AZT that could prevent disease transmission from mother to child. Ekoria was the first patient Julian was able to treat with this miracle pill that could save babies from a death sentence. When he helped the dying mother birth a healthy baby, Julian thought he had to decide whether to be happy for the hope of the child or sad for the loss of the mother.

But Julian realized he could be both.

“If you only see the losses, Raffi, our work is too hard. I want you to come back, but I know the rates of physician drug abuse and suicide and I know how devastating the losses were in Srebrenica. You’re not a doctor, yet you work with them, and doctors will always lose patients. But if we don’t keep trying, we surely won’t save any.”

Julian’s brown eyes are somber. 

Raffi’s mind turns to what Kathryn said about Raffi wanting to help people.

It’s true, she does want to help people.

She just wanted the wins with no tolerance for losses.

Raffi always thought she could think through any problem, that her mind would find the pattern, analyze the trend, solve the equation.

She now believes meditation can help her learn to slow her mind when it churns.

But can she learn to accept that trying her best is good enough?

Perhaps it was egotistical, to think she had the power to save lives.

Perhaps it was idealistic.

Perhaps it was a lot of things, but Raffi doesn’t want to stop helping because she is afraid. She wants to _keep_ helping because she is afraid, because her work is important and relevant and she thinks she can continue with this boss who has proven himself loyal to humanitarianism, not to getting his own way, and to her, even though she fell apart and came back. Raffi thinks she can find the strength, even if there is another big failure, to take time to cry, to mourn, but not to allow pain to crush her because she isn’t alone. Julian will be in pain, too. He won’t leave like JL did, and she will know to talk with him about things, not run away.

“Thank you,” Raffi says through a too-tight throat. “I would like to come back. I would like that very much.”

So she does.

Raffi helps direct policy when Doctors Without Borders launches a meningitis treatment and vaccination program in Nigeria in 1996. The next year, she is part of the team that enables Doctors Without Borders to begin outreach to street children in Madagascar, Brazil, and the Philippines. The year after that, she double- and triple-checks for protection of Doctors Without Borders staff during a civil war in the Republic of Congo — a massive humanitarian effort from which all personnel come home safe.

And she’s in the audience, clapping, when Julian and other organizational leaders accept the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Doctors Without Borders’ “pioneering humanitarian work on several continents.” 

She takes meditation classes a few times a week and hasn’t had a drink since Srebrenica.

Not even when Doctors Without Borders was blocked from assisting Rwandan refugees who were later massacred in Zaire. 

Not even when Doctors Without Borders was forced to abandon medical and nutritional aid in North Korea, hurting people whose government chose ideology over pragmatism.

Not even when Gabe left for college in California without agreeing to see her just one time before his big trip.

Slowly, Raffi gets used to the idea that he’s gone. Child custody concerns no longer apply, so she takes a deep breath and begins a discussion one evening in bed.

“I don’t need a two-bedroom apartment anymore.” 

Kathryn’s lower lip disappears behind teeth. Eyes flick away, then meet Raffi’s again. 

They sleep in the same bed most nights, but preferred clothes or shoes can be at the wrong apartment. A favored book may be too big to comfortably lug around.

They’ve been together for four years.

Even Cris has settled down. He’s been with his boyfriend, Enoch, for almost a year and the two of them are planning to move in together.

But Kathryn still wears her wedding ring.

Hasn’t told anyone at work.

Goes back to Indiana with Mark a few times a year.

She’ll hug Raffi on a crowded sidewalk, converse naturally at a restaurant, wear normal lipstick to The Monster.

But it’s been steps forward and back for years and Raffi wants to see Kathryn’s freckled face every morning without stopping to wonder which apartment they’re in — and without Mark.

Raffi tucks a lock of hair behind Kathryn’s ear. “I don’t care which neighborhood you choose or what you want to do about Mollie. But don’t you think it’s time?”

A warm hand skates down Raffi’s belly. 

Raffi pulls Kathryn’s hand away. Kisses her palm. 

“You’re not going to distract me with sex. Do you want to live together or not?”

“Of course I do.” Kathryn’s voice is gravelly, a little hurt-sounding.

“Only me? Not me and Mark?”

Blue eyes flick away again. “It’s complicated.”

“Maybe.” Raffi turns Kathryn’s hand and kisses the back. “But I think you can figure it out. Let’s talk about it again in a few days.”

“And until then?”

Raffi lowers the hand. “Until then you can distract me with sex.”

A few days later, Kathryn has a proposal. 

“This apartment in my building is perfect.” She holds up a printout of the real estate listing. “Natural light, eastern exposure, recently renovated bathroom.”

Raffi studies her identical printout. “Three floors away from Mark.”

“Look.” Kathryn points at a photo of the living room. “Your meditation mat can go in this corner and a bed for Mollie can go here and this built-in bookcase should fit all your books and mine.”

Raffi looks up from the paper. “Your books would be with us?” 

Raffi had worried this new apartment would be a place where they both slept, but Kathryn would leave items she cared about with Mark. 

Kathryn’s hand cups Raffi’s cheek. “Yes. I thought we could use your furniture unless you want us to get new things. Both our books, though, and all our clothes in the same closet and toothbrushes in the same holder — only it’s one holder in one bathroom, not two holders in two bathrooms.”

The price increases by more than they expect and Kathryn has to travel in the middle of negotiations, but Raffi and Kathryn get the apartment.

Raffi arranges to donate Gabe’s furniture to charity. She gives a farewell caress to the bed, the dresser, the desk, the chair. Tears fall when the truck rumbles away.

She and Kathryn decide to keep Raffi’s sofa with its history of drunken stupors and their first kiss and so many evenings of talking and laughing together.

They move Raffi’s dining table to the new apartment, see that it’s a little big, and buy a new one that they both like.

“Our first piece of furniture together.” Kathryn’s fingertips skim the tabletop. “It’s perfect.”

And it is. The table is solid, sturdy, a modern style they both like that can be expanded to seat as many as six people or shrunk to seat as few as two.

But the sturdy aspect is what catches Raffi’s eye.

“Hey.” Raffi steps close to Kathryn, questioning hands dropping to narrow hips. “Have you ever christened a table?”

The smile that greets Raffi is toothy until a tongue darts out to linger on a top lip.

They clean the table afterward.

A few months later, Raffi calls Mark. 

“I miss seeing you around,” she says. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable coming by the apartment, all right?”

“Thanks.” He sounds surprised. “Kath and I still talk or see each other every day. I’m fine.”

“That’s good.” Raffi shifts the phone receiver to her shoulder. “Quick question. How often did she wake you up in the middle of the night with some worry on her mind that could have waited until morning?”

Mark laughs so hard that Raffi hears his phone receiver drop and hit the floor.

It takes a few more months, but Kathryn starts to use the porcelain ring holder that Raffi put near the front door. She still wears her wedding ring to work, but begins to leave it off if they are going out with friends or seeing Raffi’s family.

Mark’s book is published, _Philosophy for Thinkers: An Introduction to Questions, Inquiries, and Reasonings_. The dedication reads, “To the woman who saw me want more than what was possible and told me we could do it together.”

Kathryn says the book is dedicated to her, to noticing Mark’s gaze following the boys in tennis class and their childhood plan that became a lifelong bond.

Raffi says the book is dedicated to her, to encouragement for Mark to write his own textbook when he didn’t like the options and their agreement that very night to abstain from their vices.

Mark tells them to enjoy their questions, inquiries, and reasonings — and he grins.

“Fine,” Kathryn snaps. “You torture us, we torture you. Let’s all go to The Monster to celebrate your book.”

Mark’s hands wave. “No, no, no. I’m not risking a student seeing me. I may not get fired, but I don’t need them making fun of the way I dance. No way. I’m not going. Not happening.”

That night, the three of them, plus Cris and Enoch, wait in line at The Monster.

Kathryn still uses her fake ID, but Mark doesn’t have a fake ID. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple as he hands over a New York driver’s license.

The group finds barstools near the grand piano and Raffi knows she has maybe an hour until Kathryn will start begging to go dancing — and Raffi intends to enjoy that hour.

“First round’s on me,” Raffi declares over singing and piano music. “How does everyone want to kick off celebrating Mark’s book and his exquisite torture?”

Mark’s woeful look almost makes her feel guilty about her part in bringing him out tonight.

Almost.

Raffi heads to the bar, but it’s too many drinks for one person to carry so Mark jumps up to help. 

“What do you want?” The bartender is snippy, as always. 

But Mark doesn’t know this and he stammers out the truth. “To be home pondering ideas, the nature of humanity, and the unknowable.”

The bartender blinks. “Me, too.”

Mark and Q look at each other. 

It’s love.

Q ignores Raffi and her requests for two waters, two whiskeys, and a cosmopolitan. Instead, Q’s elbows land on the bar and his chin rests in his hands as Q and Mark discuss expressions of thought, fate versus free will, and humanity’s stutter-step progressions from savagery to enlightenment.

For days afterward, Mark chatters to Kathryn and Raffi about Q’s charisma, his passion, his intelligence.

“What about his dark hair, his broad chest, and his big hands?” Kathryn’s eyebrow rises.

“Those things, too.” Mark grins.

Raffi thinks Mark also might like having an energetic personality to balance his calm, but she doesn’t point this out.

A few months later, Q moves in with Mark and Q’s teenage son hangs his Yankees pennant in Kathryn’s old room. Mollie spends most of her time with Mark, and Q deems the Irish Setter better company than most people.

It’s at a couples brunch at Raffi and Kathryn’s apartment, though, when Q crosses his arms and rolls his eyes at Mark’s mention of ticket prices for Mark and Kathryn to fly to Indiana for Christmas.

“Absolutely not.” Q’s purple lipstick is gone, but his haughtiness is in full force. “What is the purpose of exploring truth professionally if you aren’t truthful with those whom you profess to love? This isn’t your mid-twentieth century, Indiana childhood anymore. This is the dawn of the twenty-first century and I refuse to be a party to falsehoods and cowardice.”

Three sets of eyes stare at Q. 

He sniffs and stabs scrambled eggs with his fork.

As Q chews, Raffi watches Mark and Kathryn. There’s a conversation of head tilts and eyebrow raises.

Kathryn bites her lower lip.

Mark nods and looks away.

“What if,” Kathryn leans forward as she addresses Q, “Mark and I stay in New York this Christmas and we begin to mention marriage troubles to our family and friends back home? By next Christmas, we could be separated.”

Q’s palm slaps the table. He grins. “See how easy that was? I’ve always liked you, Kathy.”

But Raffi catches a glance between Mark and Kathryn that isn’t triumph.

It’s pain.

When Mark and Q leave, Kathryn asks Raffi to start cleaning up without her. 

The dishes are stacked in the sink when terrible sounds pull Raffi from the kitchen to a corner of the bedroom where Kathryn has her knees pulled to her chest and her hands over her face.

Raffi sits next to Kathryn on the floor. She opens her arms and holds her tear-streaked mess of a girlfriend. 

“I understood,” Kathryn’s breaths are ragged, “that he stopped wearing his ring when he and Q got together. I understood him spending less time with me. But he’s been the one constant in my life and I love you, but I — I —” She dissolves again.

Raffi rocks Kathryn like she rocked Gabe when he was a toddler. 

Chests swaying together. 

Pats on the back. 

Yearning to take away the hurt. 

Maybe she can. 

When Kathryn is cried out and crawls into bed for a nap, Raffi rides the elevator three floors, then knocks on a familiar door. 

“Yes? What?” Q looks her up and down. 

“We need to talk.”

They walk the city streets and Raffi says it’s not her favorite thing either, but Mark and Kathryn need each other. Giving them a few trips to Indiana every year is worth the benefits. Raffi tells Q how it took Kathryn and Mark, together, to lead Raffi to the meditation practices that finally helped tame the chaos in her mind. She reminds Q that Kathryn knew about The Monster long before Mark did and it was Kathryn’s idea to take Mark there the night Q and Mark met. 

Q flops dramatically onto a sidewalk bench. “Intelligent people shouldn’t indulge in subterfuge.”

“This isn’t about intelligence.” Raffi sits next to Q. “This is about a unique experience that binds two people together in a way that isn’t our place to judge.”

Raffi receives a withering glare. “I judge everything.”

But Q is quiet as a group of camera-toting tourists walk by chattering in German. 

As a bus discharges passengers and new passengers board.

As an excited puppy strains on its leash to sniff Q’s loafers.

And Q’s voice is small when he says to Raffi, “Don’t you worry she loves you less? Because of whatever it is they have?”

Raffi’s hand pats Q’s. “I did at first. Not anymore.”

She expects him to huff something about her mind being less sophisticated than his or that he has insight she lacks. 

But he simply says, “Thank you.”

Mark and Kathryn fly to Indiana that Christmas.

Years roll by. Kathryn still plucks her wedding ring from the ring holder before leaving for work and drops it back in when she gets home. Raffi winces when she hears gold strike the porcelain, but she accepts that the ring can mean one thing to Kathryn and another thing to the outside world. In some ways, Raffi is grateful same-sex marriage isn’t legal in New York. She doesn’t know if Kathryn would divorce Mark and it’s good not to have to argue about it.

Raffi meditates when she needs to, and it’s become second nature to slow her mind, to take deep breaths, to accept her best efforts. She wishes Gabe would talk to her, but she’s grateful his father shares updates. She sends a gift when Gabe gets married and another when he and his wife are expecting their first child. There are no thank-you notes, but the gifts don’t come back unopened.

It’s before dawn one morning and Raffi is still in bed when she hears taps as if someone is playing the apartment’s front door like a flute. It’s 2008, fourteen years since Raffi was fired from the United Nations.

Her eyes snap open with recognition.

She cinches on a robe. 

Yanks at the front door.

“You are not welcome in my home. Hail a cab, take a bus, or ride the train — however you do it, I want you to leave and not come back.”

JL’s bleary eyes meet hers. 

“Just want to talk.” He holds up a bottle of wine, a peace offering.

The step backward is instinctive, though Raffi’s hand stays on the doorknob. “You abandoned hundreds of thousands of people who needed you. You abandoned me, JL. If you’re here after all this time, expecting something of me after not giving a damn for all these years, then you must be desperate — and I want no part of your problems.”

JL nods. 

Turns.

Mutters over his shoulder, “Rwandan Hutus have infiltrated the United Nations and peacekeeper lives are in danger.”

Raffi is in her old living room in Astoria, crying as she reads the newspaper. 

She’s tearing the map of Rwanda off her wall.

She’s giving up on glasses and drinking wine straight from the bottle. 

No. 

A deep breath slows the pinballs in her mind and Raffi is in the apartment she shares with the woman she loves. Her meditation mat is in the corner, and she is not going to let this man with his bottle of wine hurt her again.

“Sounds like something to report to the UN Secretary General. I wish you the best of luck.” Raffi eases the door closed and sets the pin in the chain lock. 

She climbs back into bed, pulls the covers to her shoulders. 

Copper-colored hair spills onto Raffi’s pillow.

“Who was at the door?”

“JL.”

Kathryn’s eyes go wide. “What did he want?”

Raffi shakes her head. “Something about Rwandan Hutus infiltrating the United Nations and peacekeeper lives in danger. I told him to take it up with the Secretary General.”

There’s a snort. “I hope he does. Kirsten will rip him a new asshole.”

They hold each other and watch the sunrise.

***

There’s something inspiring about the oranges and purples of dawn.

Kathryn has wanted to say something for a few days, but Raffi had meditation class and Kathryn had a late meeting and the timing never seemed right. But thinking about Jean-Luc, about the years when Kathryn and Raffi were near each other at the UN but not together — it seems like wasting another minute isn’t a good idea.

“Raffi,” Kathryn says and there is a hum against her skin. “I stopped wearing my ring at work.”

The arms around Kathryn stiffen. 

She pulls away, sits cross-legged, and motions for Raffi to do the same. They face each other on the bed. 

“I thought people would ask questions, judge me, throw tomatoes.” Kathryn tries to smile as if she’s kidding but they both know she’s serious. “I don’t think anyone even noticed.”

Raffi’s thumb caresses a left ring finger narrowed under the knuckle by almost forty years of wearing a wedding band.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Kathryn’s breath is shaky. “Because I’ve tried so many times. The first time was just after Srebrenica.”

Raffi’s eyebrows rise.

“Anyway,” Kathryn holds a dark thumb to the empty place on her pale finger, “it always felt wrong. But it’s been a couple of weeks now and I’ve been keeping the ring in my purse when I’m at work. I think I can keep going, maybe even leave it home all the time. The thing is, I would like to wear a ring again. Not because I have to. Because I want to. And I know it wouldn’t be legal, but what do you think about us getting rings?”

And then Raffi is in Kathryn’s lap and Kathryn falls backward onto the bed. There is laughter and kisses and curves in motion under loving hands. Nightclothes land on the floor. It’s fast and it’s jubilant with slick fingers and cries of pleasure.

They’re spent and sated, a tangle of arms and legs, when Raffi murmurs, “Yes, by the way. Whether that was about matching jewelry or a de facto marriage proposal, yes.”

Raffi’s head is on Kathryn’s chest and Kathryn tips Raffi’s chin to kiss her. It was a de facto marriage proposal and maybe one day it will be legal. Divorcing Mark would be a stab to Kathryn’s heart, but she would do it to marry Raffi. 

It doesn’t matter right now, though.

Right now, Kathryn knows she and Raffi have worked to improve the lives of people all over the world. There may be times of joy ahead and there may be times of difficulty. But, in this moment, together, they can look forward to a beautiful future. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story ends in 2008. Four days after posting its final chapter in 2020, the US Supreme Court expanded the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect LGBTQ employees. Prior to that, just over half of US states had some measure of workplace protection due to sexual orientation, with New York protecting private employment in 2003 (state employees had been protected since 1983), and Indiana protecting private employment in 2017 (state employee protection began in 2001). Although legal protection and functional inclusivity are not synonymous, these are critical victories.
> 
> Same-sex marriage became legal in New York in 2011, and, in 2015, by order of the US Supreme Court, same-sex marriage was legalized across all fifty states, US territories, and the District of Columbia. However, some states, including Indiana, retain unenforceable gay marriage bans.
> 
> Like Annika, the US is fighting for its humanity every damn day — and still has work to do.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[FANVID] The Monster by Curator](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25763077) by [Regionalpancake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regionalpancake/pseuds/Regionalpancake)




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